SCD: FedEx & Amazon still haven’t figured out sidewalk delivery robots. Will mass adoption ever come?

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SUPPLY CHAIN DIVE reports:

For a moment, a prototype FedEx robot made the last-mile delivery process compelling enough to be featured on late night television.

“This is the future right here,” Jimmy Fallon said in 2019 as the company’s autonomous bot, later named Roxo, delivered The Tonight Show host a pizza.

But despite the hype, the path to widespread adoption for sidewalk-roaming robots to deliver goods throughout the U.S. has been anything but straightforward. FedEx canned Roxo less than four years after its flashy debut, per an October statement. Amazon, meanwhile, ended field tests for its own delivery bot after it fell short on meeting customers’ needs…

If logistics behemoths struggle to develop a successful formula for their delivery bot operations, can a long-term, sustainable business model ever be…

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