When you think about robots stealing jobs, you think about AI, about new technology that supercedes the bounds of humanity.
You’re probably not thinking about “snail mail”.
But the Norwegian postal service, Posten, has just signed a partnership with a San Francisco startup called Buddy Mobility to provide a robot that literally delivers your mail. To your door. Kinda.
It looks like this:
I guess you could call this thing a robot. You could also called it a moving PO Box with wheels.
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As reported by Digital Trends, this robot moves at 6 kilometres per hour and can deliver 100 parcels per day. That seems… pretty underwhelming, but sure.
According to Buddy Mobility’s official webpage, this partnership will provide Posten with “cost savings to offset revenue losses” and will “dramatically” decrease mail volumes.
The robots won’t deliver mail directly to your house, and will instead send recipients a notification through an app. You can walk up, pick up your mail and the Posten robot will be on its merry way, back to the post office for a recharge.