ATLAS is a new last-mile logistics robot that can deliver grocery orders in cities. It’s fully electric and designed by Drake Dong, who loves exploring the possibilities of societal progress and technology through his designs. ATLAS can work with refrigerated items, which is key to working for delivering produce or medications.
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What is extra cool about ATLAS is that it’s not just a robot. It’s the entire system, including a quick setup warehouse and a specially designed UI interface. This makes the delivery robot practical for restaurants and other non-technical company employees to operate the vehicle to use for delivering local orders.
Related: These delivery robots might bring your next pizza
Additionally, the inspiration behind ATLAS was designing an affordable way to deliver suburban produce to city dwellers. ATLAS has 12 storage pods, so the vehicle can be used to deliver multiple orders per trip, making it a sustainable option for that last mile of delivery for shipping purchases.
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ATLAS has a Fresh Pod that is fully refrigerated in the center of the robot. The designers paid special attention to the suspension to cushion deliveries. A swappable battery also shortens recharge time. You could use this vehicle to deliver local bouquets, medications, lunch orders, groceries in high-traffic cities and much more. ATLAS also has an in-wheel electric motor for more cargo space and better energy efficiency.
Furthermore, just like grocery delivery was once only an option in cities, these robots will make their debut (and already have) in larger metropolitan areas before being introduced to the suburbs. It will then be produced in a hardier version that can travel longer distances and rougher roads. The idea here was to find a fast way to construct an affordable option for bringing more produce orders into cities, where there are often fresh food deserts.
As fancy as this technology sounds, it’s actually more cost-effective than large delivery vans and extra food distributors and retailers. What’s the best thing of all? That it’s a relatively transparent process, allowing families to choose where they buy their food. This kind of technology could also automate mini popup farmers markets and the like. The possibilities are broad for this mini EV delivery bot. The platform-to-consumer delivery industry sub-segment is expected to top $247.9 billion by 2025, a truly eye-popping figure for such a new space. Expect to see delivery robots struggling through the burbs in just a couple years at this pace.
Images via Drake (Shuaicheng) Dong
