Food delivering robots are coming to downtown Dallas — and they'll record faces and license plate numbers. But the Austin-based company launching the service says privacy is a high priority.
Executives from Avride, the company rolling the service out, told members of the Public Safety Committee that the robots will be used for restaurant and grocery delivers and “small-scale logistics.”
“The goal of the robots is really to deliver in a zero to two mile radius from the pickup point to the drop off point,” Toby Snuggs, Avride’s head of sales and partnerships, told the committee on Monday. “And the customers order the food or the goods through the Uber Eats app.”
The robots will have cameras and sensors — but the data will be censored in real-time, according to the company.
“We blur from the cameras…the faces of the individuals it’s picking up and seeing,” Snuggs said. “We also blur license plates as well...any other data that we absorb stays in the United States on on servers here in the US."
Snuggs said the company is headquartered in Austin but its main “engineering resources” are located in Israel, Belgrade and Serbia. Avride also does commercial production in South Korea.
“We are not a new company, we have a lot of experience, and our technology is proven and tested around the world,” Snuggs said.
The robots are around the size of a “larger suitcase” and were designed around six large pizza boxes, according to the company’s executives.
And they can roll up to 10 miles per hour — although Avride capped their speed at 5 miles per hour.
“In reality, it's even slower. In reality, it moves…around 2 or 3 miles because it uses pedestrian infrastructure, sidewalks, and this is at normal speed of the usual pedestrian,” Avride Vice President of Corporate Affairs Anton Shingarev said.
They can last up to ten hours and have the capacity for wireless charging, but Shingarev said to start a technician will manually switch out the batteries.
The company’s robots have been making deliveries in downtown Austin with the rideshare company, Uber, since November.
Some council members had concerns other than privacy implications.
“So what if someone disrupts this or it there’s someone laying on a sidewalk?” District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis asked during the meeting.
Shingarev told elected officials that the robot “can see around probably 300 feet.”
“…And if something unpredictable happens, robot stops. This is actually the safest option. It always stops,” Shingarev said.
Avride also has “remote supervisors” that can connect remotely for unpredictable or unplanned situations. If there is a disruption, the robot may even turn around and find a new path to its destination.
“Well, I'm excited for the robots. I do think there is an issue about the activity on the sidewalks, but I think that goes for all the items that are there,” District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said. “So I just think that we have to have some real discussions about…how serious we are about walkability when we keep adding more things on the sidewalk.”
Some safety and congestion concerns aside, the committee seemed interested in Avride’s service. But either way, the city can't stop the company from operating in Dallas, according to city ordinances.
The same ordinance also came up when an autonomous-rideshare company wanted to launch its service in Dallas last year.
That plan ultimately fell through after the company, which faced two federal investigations, paused its operations in late 2023.
Avride hopes to launch its robot delivery service in mid-December.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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