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Delivery robots take the strain out of shopping in UK town
Fitted with cameras, sensors and a loud alarm if needed, the robots -- first created in 2014 by the two founders of Skype -- are 99 percent autonomous.
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An autonomous robot called Starship is pictured on its way to deliver groceries from a nearby Co-op supermarket in Milton Keynes, England on September 20, 2021. (AFP/Daniel Leal-Olivas)
I
t's famous for its roundabouts and statues of concrete cows. But the English town of Milton Keynes now has another claim to fame -- a trundling army of shopping delivery robots.
The six-wheeled automated vehicles, launched three years ago, barely get a second glance as they ply the residential streets, some 80 kilometres (49 miles) north of London.
Numbers have grown to 200 in Milton Keynes and nearby Northampton, which introduced the service in 2020, with plans for as many as 500 to be in action in five more places across the country.
According to the robots' operators, the squat white machines came into their own when Britain locked down last year as coronavirus hit the country.
"Everyone was so in need of contactless delivery during the pandemic," Andrew Curtis, head of UK operations at Starship Technologies, told AFP.
The US company, which has quadrupled its deliveries in the UK, now makes 1,000 deliveries a day.
"Demand hasn't dropped off," Curtis said, adding that as stay-at-home restrictions were lifted, users became more willing to try the technology.
