DoorDash starts robot deliveries in LA and Chicago

DoorDash has started robot deliveries in Los Angeles and Chicago. This is thanks to a partnership with the company Coco Robotics. Eligible customers will be able to receive sidewalk deliveries sourced from over 600 participating merchants.

Coco robots have been making deliveries for DoorDash in Helsinki since late last year through its international sub-brand Wolt. DoorDash says that Coco robots completed over 100,000 deliveries during this initial pilot phase.

Robots take humans out of the delivery process, which is bad for gig workers, but this method is better for the environment. Coco robots are free from emissions. Harrison Shih, Senior Director of DoorDash Labs, says that “not every delivery needs a two-ton car just to deliver two chicken sandwiches.”

This is part of a larger push by DoorDash towards what it calls “multimodal” deliveries, which combines human workers, drones and autonomous robots to “meet increasing demand while lowering costs and emissions.” To that end, the company has partnered with Wing to provide drone deliveries in the US and Australia.

DoorDash isn’t the only delivery company in town experimenting with robots. Grubhub recently started bringing delivery robots to college campuses and Uber Eats expanded autonomous deliveries to Japan.