Serve Robotics partners with Wing for robot-to-drone delivery

Ground robots and aerial drones will soon collaborate for last-mile deliveries. Serve Robotics Inc. and Wing Aviation LLC today announced a pilot partnership.

In the coming months, a Serve robot will pick up orders and deliver them to a Wing drone AutoLoader a few blocks away for aerial delivery to customers as far as six miles away.

“Robot-to-drone delivery will enable merchants to tap into drone delivery without any changes to their facilities or workflow and significantly extend the delivery area for sidewalk delivery robots,” stated the companies. “This collaboration represents an important step towards enabling highly automated delivery as the preferred mode of delivery for the millions of small packages delivered every day around the world.”

Serve Robotics rolls out with partnerships

“We’re excited to partner with Wing to offer a multi-modal delivery experience that expands our market from roughly half of all food deliveries that are within two miles of a restaurant, to offering 30-minute autonomous delivery across an entire city,” said Dr. Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics.

“Together, Serve and Wing share an ambitious vision for reliable and affordable robotic delivery at scale,” he added. “Our end-to-end robotic delivery solution will be the most efficient mode for the significant majority of deliveries.” 

Spun off from Uber in 2021, Serve Robotics develops AI-powered, low-emissions sidewalk delivery robots. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company said it has completed tens of thousands of deliveries for enterprise partners such as Uber Eats and 7-Eleven.

Serve has scalable multi-year contracts, including an agreement to deploy up to 2,000 delivery robots on the Uber Eats platform across multiple U.S. markets. 

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Wing enables robot-to-drone deliveries

Wing and Serve claimed that robot-to-drone delivery offers benefits to both merchants and customers, including:

• Fast: Wing drones fly above the gridlock, and Serve robots operate exclusively on sidewalks, so deliveries avoid being snarled in street traffic. 
• Cost-efficient: Drones and robots both lower delivery costs for the operator and consumer with no need for tipping. 
• Environmentally conscious: Both fully-electric, Wing and Serve reduce vehicle emissions associated with food delivery, as well as reducing traffic and congestion.
• Safe: By keeping vehicles off the roads, Serve and Wing help to cut down on traffic accidents.
• Convenient: Curbside robotic package pickup allows merchants to access drone delivery without modifying their facilities or installing new equipment.

“At Wing, we have been delivering food and other goods directly to consumers for over five years, completing more than 400,000 commercial deliveries across three continents. We have a proven ability to make deliveries quickly and efficiently,” said Adam Woodworth, CEO of Wing.

“Both Wing and Serve offer innovative solutions that are changing the way goods are delivered,” he said. “Through this pilot partnership, Wing hopes to reach more merchants in highly-congested areas while supporting Serve as it works to expand its delivery radius.”

A subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc., Wing said its fleet of lightweight, automated delivery drones can transport small packages directly from businesses to homes and between healthcare providers in minutes. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said its systems are safe, sustainable, and easy to integrate into existing delivery and logistics networks.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently allowed Wing and Zipline to make beyond visual line-of-sight flights over Dallas.