S Group To Start Robot Deliveries With Starship Technologies

The Finnish retailer has partnered with Starship Technologies, a global developer and manufacturer of autonomous transport robots, to deliver purchases to customers within an hour on average of the order.

The service can be accessed via the S-kaupat application, available on App Store and Google Play Store.

In the first phase, deliveries will commence at S Group’s regional cooperative HOK-Elanto, where the robots were successfully piloted last year.

In the next step, during the summer, the service will be rolled out to six stores in Tampere, Turku, Pori, Rauma, Jyväskylä and Oulu.

Starship’s robots plan their routes using artificial intelligence and GPS positioning. The robot knows all the details of the environment and routes, including road crossings, and with the help of artificial intelligence, it learns more about the environment all the time.

Starship’s robots work independently, but are monitored by humans. The technology uses computer vision to identify obstacles and is programmed to stop quickly after detecting an obstacle.

“The successful cooperation in Espoo last year showed that there is a real demand for robot deliveries among Finns,” said Alastair Westgarth, CEO of Starship Technologies.”We believe that people in different locations will adopt our innovative service and transport services will become an integral part of their everyday life.”

ESM