(Reuters) – Serve Robotics, which delivers food for Uber Eats using sidewalk robots, said it would partner with Alphabet-owned Wing Aviation to use drones, extending the operational range to more than six miles.
The pilot, announced on Tuesday, would take place in Dallas, Texas, and mark Serve’s entry into the market. The tie-up will have Serve’s robots pick up food from restaurants and transfer it to Wing drones for aerial delivery.
The company’s operations have so far focused on Los Angeles, where it delivers food and groceries for convenience retailer 7-Eleven and Shake Shack, in addition to Uber Eats.
Multi-modal delivery will expand Serve’s reach, enabling 30-minute autonomous delivery citywide, Serve’s CEO Ali Kashani said.
While drones were once touted to be the future of package and food delivery, their adoption has been limited by a lack of spaces for takeoff and landing in cities. Unlike them, sidewalk delivery robots are designed to navigate urban environments, making them a more practical solution.
“Through this pilot partnership, Wing hopes to reach more merchants in highly congested areas while supporting Serve as it works to expand its delivery radius,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said.
Serve, spun off from Postmates in 2021 a year after its acquisition by Uber, said merchants would not have to make any changes to their workflow or facilities to accommodate robot-to-drone deliveries.
The Alphabet unit, which started as a project within incubator Google X, has completed more than 400,000 commercial deliveries across three continents, Woodworth added.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)