Kiwibot, an autonomous last-mile delivery droid manufacturer, has launched its next-generation, semi-autonomous robot, “Kiwibot 4.0.” The company also announced new pilot programs and a manufacturing collaboration.

The latest version is upgraded with Level 3 autonomy (i.e., needs remote assistance from a human operator) and includes new onboard cameras, lights, speakers, sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with humans, detect traffic lights, obstacles, and path planning. The droids can reportedly operate in different weather conditions and can deliver items within a distance of one mile. The company claims delivery would be made within 30 minutes of ordering on average.

The company will be deploying Kiwibot 4.0s in a pilot program with the fast-food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A to make food deliveries in California, starting with three Santa Monica locations. Kiwibot will also be expanding its partnership with the e-commerce platform Shopify (entered into in July 2020) to include more locations in Los Angeles, San Jose, Miami, Pittsburgh, and Detroit beginning next month. 

The company is also working toward securing more restaurant partnerships. During the pilots, Kiwibot will improve robots’ capabilities and enhance its technology via a manufacturing partnership with Segway, an electric scooter company.

Kiwibot develops semi-autonomous droids mainly targeting food delivery at university campuses. Apart from Shopify, the company has partnerships with online restaurant order management system Ordermark and pizza-making robot developer Piestro (yet to go live). Since its establishment in 2017, Kiwibots have conducted more than 150,000 food deliveries to date.