Yandex, the company behind Russia’s biggest search engine, has commenced road testing of an autonomous delivery robot for small-size cargos.
Called Yandex.Rover after a space exploration device, the briefcase-sized, six-wheeled vehicle can autonomously navigate it way along routes on city sidewalks at a walking pace (5km/h / 3mph).
A number of Yandex.Rovers are currently on the road, carrying small packages on the premises of Yandex’s Moscow headquarters between the office and company bus stop, which connects all other Yandex offices in the city.
The rover moves autonomously, albeit under remote supervision for the duration of testing. It can recognise objects, plan routes, stop for pedestrians or animals, and avoid obstacles. Furthermore, the robot can operate in the dark via lidar.
Dmitry Polishchuk, head of self-driving cars at Yandex, said: “Yandex.Rover utilises our achievements in self-driving. We have adapted our existing technologies for new challenges and a new vehicle with a different set of sensors, so the development did not take as much time as it would have if we had to do it all from scratch.
“I believe robots like this will have a variety of applications in the near future. They can, for example, become indispensable for the last-mile delivery.”
Yandex said it planned to integrate the robots with its food-delivery app Yandex.Eats and grocery-delivery platform Yandex.Lavka. It added that the rover could find a home within its warehouses and data centers for in-office transportation.
