Robotic startup Ottonomy unveiled at this week’s CES 2022 a fleet of autonomous robots designed to work both indoors and outdoors for restaurants and retail delivery.
While the Ottobots are being introduced first at CES 2022, Ottonomy has recently signed deals with CVG Airport in Cincinnati, Ohio, and restaurant automation vendor, Presto, to use the Ottobots in future operations.
“The pandemic has provided Ottobots a catalyst enabling a series of partnerships that allowed us to launch fully autonomous delivery for indoor deliveries, curbside deliveries and last-mile deliveries,” said Ritukar Vijay, CEO of Ottonomy.
Ottonomy said the robots will be the first fully autonomous delivery robots at an airport. The robots will be used to deliver retail and food items to consumers throughout the airport. Presto will use the robots to deliver food ordered from their partner restaurants to customers via Ottobots. Additionally, Crave, a last-mile food delivery service, is partnering with Ottonomy for future business.
The company began pilot projects during the pandemic in 2020 and it will gather additional research as more roll outs happen, which are expected to take place later this year.
How it works
The robots create digital maps of the area and localize within that map. The location gets updated on the map as it navigates autonomously to deliver orders.
The integrated navigation software allows the Ottobots to navigate through crowded and unpredictable environments. The system can also be deployed to different geographies using a suite of tools to make them scalable and flexible.
Ottonomy said it plans to increase the roll out of robots over the next 18 months and is partnering with Aro to support the rollout in daily operations, implementation, robotic fleet management and lifecycle management.
