Your Amazon order can arrive here soon

(Newser)
–
Since the delivery of the drones is not yet completed, comes the self-propelled delivery robot from Amazon. Amazon Scout is a six-wheeled "cooler-high" electric car designed to deliver Amazon parcels along a delivery route, the Seattle Times reports. An advertising video shows Scout crossing a sidewalk, stopping in front of a house and lifting the top to show a parcel while a woman picks it up. However, until the kinks are released, only six Scout vehicles are in daylight through Snohomish County, Washington from Monday to Friday, each accompanied by an Amazon representative who can remove a parcel when the recipient is away from home. Although it is unclear how such a situation will be handled later, the robots can at least "safely and efficiently navigate around pets, pedestrians and everything else," writes executive organizer Sean Scout in a blog post.

Much remains secret about the system ̵

1; it is unknown where exactly the robots are running – but it "will change the experience of our customers in ways we can not imagine yet," the Times Quotes from one of Seattle's 21 job openings related to Scout. According to Wired avoiding foot traffic and crossing streets is "an incredible challenge in these early days of advanced robots," especially for Amazon. It reports that the company is "coming very late to this ground-based Delivery Robot game, which is crowded with players who already have years of practical experience." According to AP, the six-wheeled robots from Starship Technologies deliver hundreds of food orders every day on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Although the delivery is "not the fastest thing in the world," as a student says, the robots stop for pedestrians. (A robot waitress delivers pizza in Pakistan.)