[zaroth]

Speaking of custom built electric delivery vehicles...

I've been thinking of something purpose built to carry only small cargo and no passengers, i.e. 8 cu ft and 100lb total cargo capacity, with a limited range designed to make delivery runs and then return and charge (or maybe just swap power packs).

Nuro [1] is working on something in this vein. I think their vehicle is much too big personally, I would start with something that could carry maybe 30 lbs and 2 cu ft of cargo and scale up from there. While the walking-speed Starship [2] seems like it went too far in the other direction. But it seems like there is space for a cargo-only vehicle that could be extremely useful in the city, particularly if it's an on-demand model where businesses can hail them with an API call.

The question is whether a robot like this--which doesn't carry people but still has to operate on the roadways--does it make the AI problem materially easier to solve?

And in the spirit of fake-it-till-you-make-it, why not launch the service today by paying "operators" to remote control the vehicle over 4G links with just enough software to do collision avoidance and safely pull over if the operator disconnects?

[1] - https://nuro.ai/ [2] - https://www.starship.xyz/