On Tuesday, DoorDash unveiled Dot, a small robot it built in-house. Dot can autonomously drive on roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks to deliver food and small packages at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. The robot is designed to look friendly and cartoonish. It is painted bright red and features large LED eyes and a mouth that swings open to reveal the cargo space for food, though some may find its appearance slightly creepy.
DoorDash says it is already testing the robot with early access partners in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The company plans to make Dot available to the region’s 1.6 million residents by the end of 2025.
It might seem unusual for a food-delivery app like DoorDash to compete with trillion-dollar companies like Google and Tesla on autonomous vehicle technology. In cities like San Francisco and Austin, hailing a robotaxi is already commonplace for many residents. DoorDash argues that a similar transformation is coming for the food delivery space. The company believes Dot’s size and design are key advantages in this new market.
The stakes are high for this small robot. Countless startups have failed in the autonomous vehicle space, with some even facing penalties and fines when their machines caused harm. Robotaxis have become a symbol for Silicon Valley’s broader automation push and a target for public anger. Waymo vehicles have been vandalized on city streets, and it is easy to imagine Dots becoming the next symbol of that tension.
At the company’s San Francisco headquarters, DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang told reporters that autonomous delivery in suburbs and cities could become a large market. Tang said a key challenge for delivery robots is navigating the first and last ten feet, which refers to picking up and dropping off deliveries. Sidewalk robots from other companies address the challenge of negotiating tight spaces, but they cannot drive on roads or at high speeds like Dot can.
Tang stated that you do not always need a full-sized car to deliver a tube of toothpaste or a pack of diapers. He explained that Dot is purpose-built for the millions of deliveries they facilitate every day. It is small enough to navigate doorways and driveways, fast enough to maintain food quality, and smart enough to optimize the best routes for delivery.
Dot has four wheels and stands less than five feet tall and three feet wide. It is roughly a tenth the size of a car and weighs 350 pounds. Pressing a button on what can be described as Dot’s mouth reveals enough cargo space to fit six pizza boxes or up to 30 pounds of food. There are various inserts that merchants can put inside Dot to meet their needs, including cup holders and coolers.
There is also an LED strip on top of the vehicle to display text, and speakers that can emit a robotic voice. DoorDash says there is even a microphone on Dot, which could one day be used to facilitate AI-powered conversations between customers and the robot.
Each unit runs on an interchangeable battery that can be charged separately. The company says this was a key design feature to decouple storage and charging of the vehicles.
For navigation, Dot uses eight external cameras, alongside four radar and three lidar sensors to detect obstacles. DoorDash says the cameras are connected to a real-time AI model that combines deep learning and search-based algorithms to find the best path to customers.
The company has spent the last seven years building toward Dot. Back in 2019, DoorDash acquired the autonomous vehicle startup Scotty Labs and brought on the co-founders of another AV mapping startup, Lvl 5. In 2021, the company hired Ashu Rege, a former executive at the Amazon-owned AV company Zoox, to lead its autonomy division.
In an interview, Rege said that DoorDash’s early conversations with lawmakers regarding Dot have been positive. He stated that city and state officials have touted small vehicle delivery as a way to reduce traffic congestion.
Human delivery workers may be less enthusiastic. In a press release, DoorDash said humans will still fulfill a vast majority of their daily orders, while automation will let some workers focus more on the high-value orders that require human judgment and care.
Another hurdle for Dot is safety. Rege says Dot is trained to be deferential to bicyclists and pedestrians, while being large enough to be visible to drivers. If a Dot runs into trouble on the road, Rege says the robots cannot be remotely operated by humans. DoorDash believes teleoperation is not the right approach for Dot, and instead trains it to wait and pull over to the side of the road. A field operator will be dispatched to the Dot’s location in serious circumstances.
In Phoenix, DoorDash has created an ecosystem to support its small fleet of Dots. This includes warehouses to store the robots, charging stations to fill up their batteries, and field operators to clean and rescue them. Rege declined to disclose headcount or costs for this ecosystem.
Much like people have vandalized Waymo vehicles, it seems likely that people will try to mess with Dots. DoorDash says it included a camera inside Dot’s cargo space, partially to ensure small humans do not climb inside. Dot is also light enough to be tipped over by a few people, but Rege says field operators can flip them back upright if that ever happens.
While Dot may look playful, it is a serious and massive undertaking for DoorDash. The company would surely like to beat Uber and Instacart to market with autonomous delivery vehicles. Dot could reshape DoorDash’s position in the delivery market, but it could also introduce a wide array of new challenges.