Amazon acquires last-mile delivery robot startup Rivr – News

Amazon.com Inc. has acquired Rivr Technologies AG, a Swiss developer of delivery robots.

CNBC reported on Thursday that the deal closed earlier this week. The financial terms were not disclosed.

Rivr’s flagship product is a four-legged robot called the Rivr Two that rolls on wheels. It’s optimized for last-mile delivery, or the task of transporting goods over the final stretch of the delivery route. That leg consists of the path between a logistics hub such a warehouse and the customer’s home.

Rivr Two can carry more than 60 pounds worth of parcels or food in an internal compartment. It covers up to 8.7 miles per hour, which is about twice the speed of a walking person. The robot can stop at red lights, open gates and climb stairs.

It includes several safety features designed to reduce the risk of collisions. The robot is equipped with lights that make it easy to notice and can stop instantly if it gets too close to an object. For added measure, Rivr’s engineers have also included a physical deactivation button.

The robot lends itself to multiple use cases. Retailers and other brick-and-mortar businesses can use it to transport merchandise to customers directly from their stores. A logistics company, meanwhile, can deploy River Two robots in its vans. After reaching a delivery stop, the driver and robot can head off in different directions to parallelize package drop-offs.

Amazon reportedly plans to prioritize the latter use case. The tech giant relies on a large network of delivery companies to ferry packages to online shoppers. According to CNBC, Amazon has informed third-party logistics contractors that it will work with them to test Rivr’s technology. 

“We are in the early stages of this journey, and as we progress, we will engage you and our teams to help us field test this technology, gathering real-world insights and incorporating your feedback into how we scale this technology in the future,” Amazon stated in the memo.

Rivr’s technology may also have applications in other parts of Amazon’s supply chain. The artificial intelligence software that powers the Rivr Two could prove particularly valuable in that respect. 

Rivr trains its AI models using a framework that combines supervised and unsurprised learning methods. Supervised learning relies on training datasets that include explanatory notes. Unsupervised learning data, meanwhile, doesn’t use such notes and also differs from supervised approaches in a number of other areas.

The company says that its training framework can be used to develop AI models for not only four-legged robots but also other autonomous machines. During one internal project, it adapted its software to a new robot form factor in just one week. Amazon could potentially use the technology to enhance the AI capabilities of the more than 1 million robots in its warehouses.

In 2020, the tech giant acquired a self-driving vehicle startup called Zoox Inc. for $1.2 billion. It’s currently testing Zoox-powered SUVs in multiple cities. Amazon could potentially combine self-driving delivery vans with Rivr robots to create a fully autonomous last-mile delivery workflow. 

Photo: Rivr