There’s a new bot in town.
The Coco delivery robots that have become a regular part of so many Los Angeles neighborhoods will now have a whole new look — a redesign the company behind them says will help to expand the bots’ capabilities.
Coco Robotics is the company behind the bustling bots. Coco was launched as a startup out of UCLA.
Now, the company will power up with technology created by AI giant Nvidia to help launch Coco 2, a mobile bot that Coco’s co-founder Zach Rash will be able to make deliveries in a multitude of unsafe conditions — including flooding and snow.
“We want it to have a lot more reliability in the most extreme conditions where it’s either unsafe or uncomfortable for human drivers to be on the road,” Rash said in a Los Angeles Times report. “Those are the exact times where everyone wants to order.”
Many Angelenos have become familiar with the bulky bots, equipped with lights and a sometimes erratic driving pattern as they dash across sidewalks making deliveries across several LA neighborhoods.
However, Coco 2 will have a sleeker design with new cameras and will use laser technology, similar to what’s in self-driving cars to navigate busy streets and sidewalks. They will still feature the brand’s name on the side of the bots and a pink and white color scheme.
“One of the design principles on the color and the name and a lot of the branding was to feel warm and friendly to people,” Rash said of the design.
Coco currently has a fleet of about 300 robot delivery bots, serving the communities of West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Westwood, Mid-City, Hollywood, Echo Park and more. There’s also demand to expand the Coco units to neighborhoods in Burbank and across the rest of the county.
“A lot of the markets that we go into have been telling us they can’t hire enough people to do the deliveries and to continue to grow at the pace that customers want,” Rash added. “There’s quite a lot of area in Los Angeles that we can still cover.”
It was during heavy rainfall in Los Angeles earlier this year when one Coco bot got stuck in some nasty wet weather, falling victim to some minor sidewalk flooding.
In a photo that went viral on social media, the bot could be seen stuck on a sidewalk as water rushed around it.
Coco 2 will have a storage compartment meant to withstand flooding while keeping food and other goods dry.
By the summer, Coco Robotics hopes to ramp production up to 1,000 units a month and to deploy across the country as well as in Asia and Europe.
Coco recently partnered with DashMart, a brand launched by DoorDash to deliver groceries, electronics and other necessities — the service is delivery only and allows users to get things dropped off direct to their doors by the speedy robots.
While some have criticized the bots for taking away jobs from human delivery drivers, they still require human supervision, creating additional jobs.
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