Austin may be getting a fleet of Starship robots in the near future. FOX 7’s Casey Claiborne has more on how the robots will work.
The co-founders of Skype, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis in Estonia — the country south of Finland in Northern Europe — have created Starship Technologies, a company that designs and manufactures a cooler-sized autonomous drone on wheels with interactive green and red blinking LED lights, radar, microphones, and cameras.
The Starship drone is designed to deliver groceries, drugstore goods, restaurant food and small packages to suburban homes. The ground drone eliminates the risks of flying drones, which could hit aircraft or drop out of the sky and injure someone.
The ground drone is designed to transport about 40 pounds, which amounts to about to about two bags of groceries. The navigation technology utilizes high-resolution maps of local neighborhoods, and cameras and a radar device keep the drone on track instead of GPS technology, which isn’t accurate enough to keep the drone on a sidewalk. If the drone gets confused or lost, the technology can notify human operators to take over navigation.
The drone has additional cameras for security, and microphones and speakers to complete the human machine interface.
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