\n<\/p>\n
C<\/span>ity dwellers around the world have long been used to rapid delivery of takeaway food and, increasingly, groceries. But what they are not entirely used to \u2013 yet \u2013 is the sight of a robot pulling up to their front door. The co-founder of Skype, Ahti Heinla, believes his new venture is about to change that.<\/p>\n Heinla is the chief executive of Starship Technologies, a startup that, he claimed, is able to operate deliveries run by trundling robots at a small profit \u2013 and cheaper than a human delivery driver, even in small towns and villages where delivery has not previously been viable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve solved everything that there is to solve,\u201d Heinla said over lunch at a London hotel. \u201cYou could count how many years this is or how many months this is. But it will happen. It\u2019s very clear it will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents of Manchester, Leeds, Cambridge and Milton Keynes in the UK, across Finland, and in Heinla and Starship\u2019s home country of Estonia have all received food and groceries from the robots. They are becoming increasingly mainstream: they made an appearance at a 10 Downing Street garden party, and in an episode of The Bear, the hit US restaurant drama. Starship has made 8m deliveries with only 200 employees, but the company wants that number to rocket.<\/p>\n Heinla has already made a lot of money by co-creating software that became a verb: to Skype.<\/p>\n In 2000, Heinla was a video game developer who was hired by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstr\u00f6m and Jaan Tallinn, a fellow Estonian, to write some new code quickly. That became the filesharing programme Kazaa, and then, using similar tech, Skype. The six-strong founding team ended up selling to the online auction site eBay for $3.1bn (\u00a32.3bn) in 2005.<\/p>\n That was an age ago in tech time \u2013 Skype closed this year, and Heinla says of that time\u201d: \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a different me.\u201d Heinla would not reveal how much he made, but he could, he said, do the ex-tech boss thing flying in private jets if he wanted to.<\/p>\n <\/span>Ahti Heinla says robotics could \u2018touch everybody\u2019s lives\u2019 through autonomous deliveries.<\/span> Photograph: none<\/p>\n But he does not want to. \u201cI do see a lot of people in the world just trying to pursue money for money\u2019s sake, even if they have enough,\u201d the Estonian said. \u201cI\u2019m not like that. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not interested in money or making money.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t need more. Why should I need it? Why do I have a palace? Why? What\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Heinla said that making a success of autonomous delivery is one of the quickest ways that robotics could \u201ctouch everybody\u2019s lives\u201d.<\/p>\n After Skype, Heinla founded various businesses, including a shortlived social network effort. In 2014, he decided to enter a competition run by the US space agency Nasa to design a cheap Mars rover. Nasa did not choose the design, but what was good enough to cover extraterrestrial terrain could also handle wonky paving on urban roads. Radars, cameras, and ultrasound sensors watched out for obstacles, while the system learned from experience.<\/p>\n By 2017, the robots were driving in Estonia without an accompanying \u201csafety walker\u201d \u2013 which Heinla claimed were the first unsupervised robots driving autonomously in public. In 2018, the company launched its pilot commercial service on Milton Keynes\u2019s predictable grid of streets. It is working with fellow Estonian tech company Bolt, the UK\u2019s Co-op supermarket chain and the US food delivery company Grubhub, among others.<\/p>\n <\/span>A Starship Technologies robot making grocery deliveries in Milton Keynes, England.<\/span> Photograph: Justin Long\/Alamy<\/p>\n Starship may well have the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world. However, it will face competition as autonomous technology improves. Rivals include US startups Serve Robotics and Nuro, plus Saudi Arabia-backed Noon. There could also be a challenge from the host of companies developing autonomous cars, ranging from the US\u2019s Tesla to China\u2019s Baidu.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most eye-catching rivals are those that have slipped the bonds of earth: the Dublin startup Manna Aero is already delivering coffees and pizzas using flying drones, while Amazon and Google sister company Wing have also tried out drone services.<\/p>\n A common complaint from many of these companies is that they are being held back by inconsistent rules. Starship has had to negotiate with each individual council in the UK, holding back its rollout. In contrast, the company is making 1m deliveries a year in Finland \u2013 where the government introduced national legislation on what robots were allowed on pavements \u2013 to a population of 5.6 million; in the UK far fewer robots serve 69 million people.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe are ready to invest in UK as well to expand larger in UK as well, but we would like this regulatory clarity as well,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have lessrobots in the UK than we have in Finland. But we could have more, we could have much more.\u201d<\/p>\n He cited the example of a potential customer in the UK that has delivery in 200 sites, but wants to add it in 800 more, including those outside big towns and cities.<\/p>\n <\/span>A Starship Technologies robot crosses a road during tests in Northampton, UK.<\/span> Photograph: Brian Tomlinson\/Starship Technologies<\/p>\n \u201cThat is a unique part that robots could be doing,\u201d said Heinla. \u201cAnd we want to do that. We want to bring delivery to the small towns in the UK as well. We\u2019re ready to invest in scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Many economists and futurists have long warned that the rise of robots will take human jobs. Heinla argued that Starship\u2019s robots are not stealing jobs, but rather will address the burgeoning demand for deliveries, while humans focus on longer and more complicated jobs. He also argued that robots will help smaller stores \u201cto thrive economically and compete with the larger, more central operations\u201d. \u201cGiving more capabilities to people is useful,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Starship has raised just over \u20ac200m (\u00a3175m), with the last funding round led by Plural Partners in London and other venture capitalists primarily in Europe. That is far less than the billions raised in recent years by rapid delivery companies reliant on humans. However, many of those companies \u2013 Getir, Gorillas and Weezy, among others \u2013 flamed out after raising huge sums.<\/p>\n Robots have an upfront cost \u2013 several thousand pounds, but below \u20ac10,000, said Heinla \u2013 but overall costs per delivery are \u201ccomparable to what it costs with people, but it\u2019s less\u201d, he said, while declining to share precise figures. He said that Starship deliveries generate cash.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not a fully profitable business yet, but I\u2019m sure we will be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Some retailers are sceptical that robots can be more efficient than human riders offered by the likes of Deliveroo and Uber Eats. However, Heinla argued that robots can work for restaurants and retailers in less densely populated urban areas because they do not need to be paid for idle time.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost every company that does delivery will need this,\u201d he said. \u201cAt some point it will be not even a choice, because it will just be so much cheaper to do it by robot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" City dwellers around the world have long been used to rapid delivery of takeaway food and, increasingly, groceries. But what they are not entirely used to \u2013 yet \u2013 is the sight of a robot pulling up to their front door. The co-founder of Skype, Ahti Heinla, believes his new venture is about to change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[6863,6021,15583,6344,1545,2226,977,15582,74,7263],"class_list":{"0":"post-25834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-cofounder","9":"tag-delivery","10":"tag-fastgrowing","11":"tag-happen","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-retail","14":"tag-robots","15":"tag-skype","16":"tag-starship","17":"tag-venture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}