Evri parcels are being delivered by a robot this week, with one mum telling her toddler that postmen might not exist when she’s older.
Milo the metal dog is near the size of a Great Dane, and deposits parcels by squatting down and shaking its tush so that they fall on the ground.
We followed as it did a round of deliveries in the Leeds suburb of Meanwood yesterday, asking customers what they made of it.
Most seemed happy to see it trundle along the pavement, with mum-of-two Molly saying deliveries would be ‘better than bin day’ for kids watching out of the window.
Speaking to her daughters, Elsie and Tammy, she added: ‘When you’re grown up, this is all you’ll see.’
Carolyn Dickinson, 54, was impressed, telling Metro: ‘It looks like a little donkey or something.
‘I like to see all these new inventions getting rolled out, but it does make me feel old. I never imagined it would happen in my lifetime.’
But husband Ian, 63, who runs family business Termipest with her, was less excited, saying he was glad robots weren’t yet able to do pest control.
‘It’s to get people out of jobs, like in supermarkets when you’re scanning your own stuff,’ he said.
‘I can’t see how it’s going to work; it can’t be cost effective. By the time that’s got out of the van, the courier could have got out and delivered and been on their way.’
He wasn’t keen on calling it a dog either, correcting me: ‘That’s not a dog, it’s a robot.’
Parcel company Evri is testing out the machine for two weeks, before a longer trial of a more traditional delivery robot, which looks like a box on wheels.
The quadruped got plus points for climbing stairs, but couldn’t ring doorbells or open gates, and could be thwarted by a badly placed wheelie bin.
Adrian Berry, the company’s head of innovation, said: ‘I think it’s inevitable we’ll use robots to deliver.
‘My view is that we’re where we were with lockers ten years ago, and look at lockers now.’
He said the sticking point wasn’t technology but legislation, with self-driving cars and delivery robots already common in China and California.
By the end of the trial, the dog should be delivering 80 parcels a day, which is what a human can manage on average.
Yesterday it only did 30, but we still racked up over 10,000 steps following it around, illustrating how physical the job is, and how the dog might help.
It can be controlled remotely or via a handset, though it is learning to do more autonomously all the time and does most things by itself.
If Evri decide to use the dog, it would be alongside a human, whereas the ‘box on wheels’ style robots could carry out deliveries alone.
Roman Brierly, 17, said it ‘caught me by surprise but it’s very cool’ after watching the dog drop a parcel at his door.
He picked up a parcel for his dad, jumpers from Shein, in a package so big and squishy that at first the dog struggled to shake it out of its box.
Despite him and his younger sister finding it intriguing, they were not sure what their nervy greyhounds would make of it.
Patricia Smith, 43, watched the dog roll up a ramp to her shop, Meanwood Mobility.
‘It was fun to watch,’ she said. ‘That’s pretty clever; quite unique, isn’t it?’
Like many residents we spoke to, she is already used to seeing box-on-wheels robots deliver small grocery orders for Co-op locally, so wasn’t too shocked.
The dog uses a robot model from Unitree, programmed with AI from Swiss company Rivr.
It uses cameras and sensors to navigate, and is linked with other dogs elsewhere so that whatever it learns about dealing with obstacles is also instantly learned by the others.
Jan Johnson, 63, said: ‘My only concern is I hope it isn’t taking jobs from delivery drivers, but if it’s safer in terms of saving their backs, and if it saves time, then it’s a good thing.’
Adrian said if Evri do use robots in future, they need to make sure parcels are left securely, such as allowing customers to book a timeslot and collect their package so it is not just left on the ground.
‘It can’t ring a doorbell, but it can send a text message when it’s nearby with a parcel, which might work better for some people,’ he said. Robots could also do more deliveries in the evening, when customers are home from work.
The dog has a speaker so it could potentially alert people with a noise, but Adrian said: ‘We did talk about barking, but we thought that was a bit too freaky.’
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