The robot can be used in Yandex.Food and Yandex.Lavka, for the delivery of goods from the online store to local addresses, or play a part in warehouse logistics and order fulfillment.
This is an autonomous robot, about half a meter high, is capable of driving on city sidewalks at the speed of a pedestrian. Due to its resemblance to a lunar rover, the robot was called Yandex.Rover.
The first few robots are already trying their hand at business. They carry documents from the doors of Yandex headquarters to the bus that delivers them to other company offices in Moscow. The robot moves completely independently, but at the test stage, the operator remotely watches it. The rover can recognize objects around, plan a route, avoid obstacles, let pedestrians and animals pass, and thanks to the lidar, it can do all this even in the dark.
Dmitry Polishchuk, head of unmanned vehicles at Yandex has said:
We adapted existing technologies for new tasks and a new system with a different set of sensors, so development took less time than if we had done everything from scratch. I am sure that in the near future such robots will find many applications. For example, they can become indispensable for the “last mile” stage in logistics.
In the future, Rover can organically fit into the ecosystem of Yandex. For example, it can be used in Yandex.Food and Yandex.Lavka, for the delivery of goods from the online store I take or in warehouse logistics. After testing is complete, Yandex will consider offering the robot to other companies.
