Mitsubishi Partners with Cartken to Break Into Robotic Delivery
Mitsubishi Electric, the electronics maker for automakers, is launching a pilot program to evaluate the value of autonomous robots.
The company will work with Cartken, a Google spinout that broke away in March 2021, to deploy a small number of Cartken delivery robots at a Japanese shopping mall to offer indoor food delivery, initially for Starbucks customers.
According to Mitsubishi representatives, customers will be able to use their Starbucks app to choose robotic delivery for their order, and a Cartken robot will meet the customer at one of the delivery points inside or outside the mall. According to Anjali Jindal Naik, Cartken's chief operating officer and co-founder, the pilot at the Aeon Mall Tokoname will run from January until April 2022.
“Our goal is to develop the best technology on the market with broader viability, not just a novelty that comes with an autonomous delivery service. We are very pleased that such respected companies as Mitsubishi Electric, which has paved the way in many industries, recognize the quality of our platform, and we look forward to the start of a new era of autonomous robotics in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world”
The pilot with Cartken, in which Mitsubishi is testing delivery robots for the first time, will help the company explore other use cases for the technology while entering Japan's emerging autonomous delivery market.
“Mitsubishi Electric would like to create a new robot delivery market in Japan using Cartken robots. This is a completely new endeavor for us, and in the process we can draw on our knowledge, technology and even customer relationships from various Mitsubishi business units to succeed in developing this program and enter new markets where the technology may be in demand”
While in the first phase of the partnership Mitsubishi acts as a distributor of Cartken's technology, the two companies intend to later work together on developing additional technologies that will support future Mitsubishi partnerships. For example, they are currently exploring developing facility technology that could help Cartken robots interact with elevators.
Cartken, which in 2021 entered a partnership agreement with REEF Technology to use its autonomous robots for food delivery in downtown Miami, will not only gain Mitsubishi's electrical equipment expertise but also help the startup establish itself in Japan.
The pilot at the Aeon mall will help with this. Aeon is one of the largest retailers in Asia, with a retail network covering not only hundreds of shopping malls but also convenience stores and supermarkets.
“Aeon Mall was chosen because it is an ideal ecosystem for testing whether robots succeed at high volume. In addition, Aeon Mall allows exploring a range of use cases with the goal of quickly adding more robots so that more visitors can use delivery services, and then scaling up by 2022”
According to Fujita, Mitsubishi selected Cartken Model C robots because of their high safety and reliability ratings both indoors and outdoors. The startup says its robots can navigate autonomously inside and outside the mall, but all of them are equipped with remote monitoring systems that allow human control when needed.
“So far we have encountered only a few situations that required emergency remote assistance. New construction that requires an alternative route for the robot is an example of where a remote operator gets involved. Similarly, remote assistance is used during setup, which lets us complete deployment in just a few days while the robots learn the service area map”
Cartken was founded in 2019 and in March 2021 announced a partnership with REEF Technology for delivery in Miami. In Miami, robots picked up dinner orders from restaurants in REEF's delivery-only kitchen network and delivered them to people within a 1.2 km radius.
“Safety and reliability are the most important factors for an excellent experience with autonomous delivery robots. Safety for the people the robot interacts with along the way, and reliability of service for the end customer. Cartken's consistently high ratings in these areas, both indoors and outdoors, made it an excellent choice for this partnership, as we think more broadly about Mitsubishi Electric's future in deploying autonomous robotics with increasingly complex contacts”
If the pilot at the Aeon Mall Tokoname is successful, the companies plan to expand to deliver goods from more stores in the mall and to other locations within the Aeon mall.
Recently, Serve Robotics, an Uber subsidiary, announced that its robots can operate with the same levels of autonomy. The company said that in certain operational design areas, also called geofences, its robots can achieve full autonomy. As with Cartken, its robots also have remote operators on standby in case of an emergency.
