Robot dogs could soon leave packages at your doorstep — automating delivery’s ‘final frontier’

• Boston Dynamics is testing Spot, its robot dog, for delivering packages to your doorstep.
• Spot can take packages from delivery vans to houses, the company said Tuesday.
• It could bring automation to the “final frontier” of delivery, Boston Dynamics said.

Getting deliveries from a truck to your front door might soon involve a robot dog.

Robotics company Boston Dynamics is testing Spot, its canine-shaped robot, as a delivery worker that can ride along in trucks and hop out to leave packages at customers’ doorsteps.

The delivery-focused version of Spot includes a conveyor belt. A video posted by the company on Tuesday shows a human worker placing packages on the conveyor belt, followed by Spot walking up to houses and rotating the belt to set them down.

Robots are already carrying some deliveries most of the way to their destinations. Spot, though, is meant to tackle the last few feet of those deliveries — the “porch gap,” as Boston Dynamics calls it.

“So much of logistics is already automated, but we believe that the final frontier of logistics automation is that last 50 feet,” Marco da Silva, vice president and general manager for Spot at Boston Dynamics, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Boston Dynamics said it’s in talks with major logistics companies to test Spot for making deliveries. The robot has previously been used for other applications, from security to site inspections, Boston Dynamics said.

Loading deliveries into autonomous delivery vehicles and getting them from curbs to doorsteps are challenging, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said last year. It’s one aspect of the delivery that human workers can navigate more easily than robots can, Xu said.

DoorDash has been using Dot, its autonomous delivery robot, for some deliveries in Arizona. The stroller-sized robot is small enough to fit through doorframes and travel on surfaces where full-sized cars can’t — an advantage for picking up and delivering items directly to customers’ doors, DoorDash has said.

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