If you live in Milton Keynes, Leeds, Northampton, Manchester, Bedford or Cambridge, the idea of a robot delivering your shopping is not the future, it is here. Since 2018, trundling along British pavements have been the Starship robots, small four-wheeled autonomous vehicles that carry groceries from Co-op stores to their customers’ homes. What is so remarkable about these robots is how unremarkable their entry into our cities and towns has become. There have been no alarm bells about an alien invasion, no Terminator-style headlines in the local papers or mass protests by Deliveroo drivers worried about their jobs. If you go to social media, most of the videos are people trying to help the robots

Source: The Times December 31, 2024 12:41 UTC