Postmates reveals its cute, automated delivery robot

Meet Serve.

Serve is Postmates’ new automated delivery robot, developed to help make the company’s on-demand deliveries more efficient.

It’ll ride along sidewalks and can carry up to 50 lbs, traveling 25 miles on a single charge. There’s dynamic lighting in the eyes and a light ring up top to indicate movement, while customers can interact with Serve using a touchscreen and cameras mounted on top of the robot. 

Serve will launch first in the Los Angeles area, and will gradually rollout to the other U.S. cities its over the next 12 months. 

The company said it’ll work with local governments to ensure Serve can do its job without being a nuisance, and its technology ensures that it won’t obstruct the public, in particular elderly or disabled neighbors who use sidewalks daily.

“We took a design-first approach with Serve that walks alongside people and fits into our communities,” Bastian Lehmann, Postmates co-founder & CEO, said in a statement. 

With 350,000 Postmates on the road, Serve could help to reduce congestion and emissions created by the company’s fleet of vehicles, while also helping to speed up deliveries and move them at zero cost.

Of course, Postmates isn’t the first company to work on autonomous delivery robots, with the likes of grocery store chain Kroger and fast food chain Jack In The Box experimenting with the technology.