Let’s hope you’re not afraid of dogs, because if Continental gets its way, autonomous robot dogs are going to be delivering your packages. At the Consumer Electronics Show today, Continental unveiled its Black Mirror-esque vision for how driverless vehicles can autonomously deploy bots to facilitate last-mile deliveries.
But it’s not just to look cool while also horrifying you — it’s designed to increase availability, efficiency and safety in the realm of package delivery. The first part is the driverless vehicle itself, called the Continental Urban Mobility Experience (CUbE). Its specific purpose is to carry delivery robot dogs and deploy them to handle the last yards of the goods. So, imagine one of these CUbE pods dropping off a robot dog, and then seeing that robot dog run up to your door with your package.
“With the help of robot delivery, Continental’s vision for seamless mobility can extend right to your doorstep. Our vision of cascaded robot delivery leverages a driverless vehicle to carry delivery robots, creating an efficient transport team,” Continental Head of Systems and Technology, Chassis & Safety division Ralph Lauxmann said in a press release. “Both are electrified, both are autonomous and, in principle, both can be based on the same scalable technology portfolio. These synergies create an exciting potential for holistic delivery concepts using similar solutions for different platforms. Beyond this technology foundation, it’s reasonable to expect a whole value chain to develop in this area.”
It’s not clear if and when these will be deployed, but it’s undoubtedly an intriguing vision of the future. Segway is also at CES this week, showing off its new autonomous delivery bots. The idea is to use the bot to make autonomous deliveries for food, packages and other items.
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