Vayu's New Autonomous Delivery Robot Challenges Industry Norms

Rugged new robot delivery vehicle promises 'ultra-fast' service -- ...

An artificially intelligent, self-driving delivery vehicle is the latest in robotic technology soon coming to streets near you -- even as other autonomous automakers face probes over dangers with their vehicles. Tech company Vayu Robotics' entry in the running is a sky-blue colored, mini Volkswagen van-looking machine -- capable of driving up to 20 miles per hour while lugging up to 100 pounds of goods. On Tuesday, an unnamed "large e-commerce player" inked a deal to deploy 2,500 of the six-foot-long "Vayu One" robots, the company with senior leadership coming from Apple and Lyft announced. A video demonstration of the self-driving device depicts a store worker stocking up the blue bot -- it followed her down the aisles -- before sending groceries en route to a customer's home, navigating potholes, crosswalks and all. Occasionally, a side door opens as Vayu One's mechanical arm leaves the goods streetside. The big-to-do over this particular piece of tech is that its AI model is reportedly sharp enough to eliminate the need for industry-common "light detection and ranging" (Lidar) that pre-maps the Earth's surface and texture. Vayu One "operates autonomously without pre-mapping the roads it intends to drive on," per the company. The bot also "is capable of navigating inside stores, on city streets, and unloading packages on driveways or porches." CEO Anand Gopalan said this new technology has provided answers to problems that "plagued" the development of delivery bots for more than a decade. Now, companies can "finally create a solution that can actually be deployed at scale and enable the cheap transport of goods everywhere," he said.

Vayu unveils 'first-of-its-kind' LiDAR-free delivery robot that can drive 20 mph on city streets

Robotics and AI specialist Vayu has unveiled a new delivery robot called the One today, which was designed to autonomously navigate stores and streets at speeds up to 20 mph. The company also secured its first order for a massive amount of robots to put into commercial operations. Vayu Robotics is a team of engineers and business leaders focused on implementing next-generation AI technology to the segment of autonomous deliveries in order to contribute to a more sustainable and connected world. Per the company website, "Vayu" is derived from Sanskrit and represents "the intelligence that enables all motion in the universe and all movement of energy." The company's three co-founders held positions at Velodyne, Apple, and Lyft before combining forces to combine decades of knowledge in robotics and autonomous software. Before today's news, the startup had raised $12.7 million to develop its low-cost "robotics nervous system," central to the new autonomous delivery robot it officially unveiled earlier today. According to a release from Vayu Robotics, it took the opposite design approach to many of its competitors in the autonomous delivery space today. Rather than relying on expensive LiDAR sensors and software modules that are only capable of one task at a time, the Vayu team combined a transformer-based mobility foundation model with a passive sensor, alleviating the need for LiDAR altogether. The result is a new autonomous delivery robot called the Vayu One that can operate without pre-mapping roads while safely navigating inside stores, streets, sidewalks, and driveways. The miniature autonomous vessel seen above can transport up to 100 pounds of cargo at speeds up to 20 mph. As a result, Vayu has declared its delivery robot the "first-of-its-kind" for on-road transport. We'd argue there aren't many roads that will want a tiny robot that only goes 20 mph, but it is an achievement in the space nonetheless. Per Vayu CEO Anand Gopalan: The unique set of technologies we have developed at Vayu have allowed us to solve problems that have plagued delivery robots over the past decade, and finally create a solution that can actually be deployed at scale and enable the cheap transport of goods everywhere. Following today's public debut, Vayu shared its delivery robots are ready for commercial deployment and that it has already secured an order for 2,500 units from "a large e-commerce player." Looking ahead, Vayu says it is already working with a leading global robotics manufacturer to replace its LiDAR sensors with its sensing technology to support other robotic applications beyond autonomous deliveries and plans to adapt the technology to support different methods of transport in the future. Gopalan elaborated: Our software is robot form factor agnostic and we have already deployed it across several wheeled form factors. In the near future, Vayu's software technology will enable the movement of quadrupedal and bipedal robots, allowing us to expand into those markets as well. Check out the Vayu One delivery robot in action in the video below:

Ex-Apple car engineers' startup Vayu offers autonomous delivery robots sans Lidar sensors

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Generative AI is ushering in a new age of smart robots that can handle complex workflows in enterprise settings. Several players are working in this domain, but it is just the beginning. Soon, this technological leap may even reach your doorstep, thanks to California-based Vayu Robotics and its novel on-road delivery robots. While multiple organizations, including Kiwibot, Neolix, Serve Robotics and Starship Technologies, have explored the idea of automating deliveries with robots, Vayu stands out with its unique approach. The company has tapped the power of foundation models to create a delivery system that can navigate autonomously in any environment -- without using the complex and expensive tech stack normally required. "The unique set of technologies we have developed at Vayu has allowed us to solve problems that have plagued delivery robots over the past decade, and finally create a solution that can actually be deployed at scale and enable the cheap transport of goods everywhere," Anand Gopalan, the founder and CEO of the company, said in a statement. The company has been around only for a little over two years but is already getting traction from enterprises, including large ecommerce players looking to deliver on the promise of ultra-fast product deliveries. Eliminating expensive Lidar-based tech stack Mobility systems have long relied on a Lidar-based tech stack. The sensors emit laser pulses and measure the time it takes for the light to bounce back from objects, producing information for different algorithms to map the environment in 3D and enable the robot to navigate it effectively. The approach works well but often hits enterprises with one major issue: high costs. Essentially, high-quality lidar sensors, especially those with long-range and high resolution, can be costly and supply constrained. This can significantly increase the overall cost of building robotic systems, making them difficult to scale. Gopalan, previously the CEO of Lidar sensor company Velodyne, saw this gap when dealing with potential customers in the robotics and autonomous mobility industries. According to him, the customers built their first systems successfully but ended up hitting a wall because either the hardware was too expensive to scale or the accompanying software couldn't deal with uncertainties (things like fog or direct sunlight hitting the sensor). By contrast, Tesla Motors has pursued driver assisted "self-driving" without Lidar as well, and without radar (sound-based detection), using a computer vision only approach that was initially viewed skeptically by rivals and experts, and even some within the company, but has now proved to be among the more accessible, cost-effective and resilient self-driving modalities to date. Now it appears that Gopalan and his colleagues at Vayu have also embraced a similar approach. Rising from the ashes of the scuttled Apple Car Prompted by the need for robots that are scalable and cost-effective from the get-go, he started Vayu Robotics with Mahesh Krishnamurthi and Nitish Srivastava from Apple's now-scrubbed Special Projects Group, focused on the self-driving "Apple Car," reportedly canceled in February 2024. The trio started operations in 2021 and eventually developed a ready-to-scale autonomous delivery robot that can navigate complex environments, including city streets and shop floors, at a speed of less than 20mph while carrying payloads weighing up to 100 pounds. The biggest differentiator: the Vayu robot does this without using expensive Lidar sensors or pre-mapping the environment it has to navigate. Instead, it uses a transformer-based "mobility foundation model" with a new type of passive sensor. "The mobility foundation model has been trained in a simulation environment developed by Vayu. The environment allowed us to procedurally generate millions of moving miles and challenging corner cases. Vayu has also developed a unique sim-to-real transfer approach that allows us to transfer the learning from this AI model to the real world. This enables us to create an autonomy stack with a fraction of the time and compute cost of a traditional approach," Gopalan explained. Flexible tech The CEO noted that the mobility technology is neither form factor nor application-exclusive. It can be used in different fields of work and even replace existing Lidar-based tech stacks across robotic systems. The company chose to start with delivery robots as ecommerce is witnessing a massive surge but the cost per delivery continues to remain very high. Vayu's autonomous systems, having the same cost basis as a standard automotive camera module, can easily bring that down. "The delivery robot's system will connect to the customer's ecommerce order dispatch workflow, and receive the destination location and order specifics similar to a third-party logistics provider. Our first customers usually house the robots at their warehouse or dark store location and are responsible for loading the physical goods into the robot. Once that's done, Vayu's autonomy system will take over. It will travel to the specified end location, drop off the package and proceed," he added. Over 100 prospects on waitlist for Vayu robot While Vayu started commercialization efforts for the delivery bot only a few months ago, it is already witnessing significant traction, with as many as 20 enterprises piloting the technology and over 100 prospects on a waitlist. The company also recently signed a commercial agreement to deploy 2500 robots for a large ecommerce company. "In our test phase, the robots have clocked up thousands of miles on the road and millions virtually. With a high degree of confidence, we anticipate growth to $50M over the next 3 years. If we include a broader look at the market opportunity for both robotic delivery and low-cost depth sensing, we could easily exceed this amount," Gopalan said. The company also plans to demonstrate how the technology can go beyond wheeled robots and drive the function of bipedal and quadrupedal robots. It will showcase the solution by the end of this year.