alt Hacker News> Last mile is already “solved” with the little robots that drive around cities, no need for hands.
And yet we haven’t seen widespread adoption because they can’t handle stairs, steep slopes, streets without sidewalks, sidewalks with mud, or a hundred other real world challenges
We haven’t seen widespread adoption because they can’t hope to compete with human delivery drivers on cost. The cost to DoorDash and Uber Eats of a delivery driver is nothing upfront and a few dollars per delivery. The cost of a delivery robot is thousands of dollars upfront and more per delivery. Stairs aren’t even in the top 10 problems these robots face, they’re more than capable of delivering to most customers already.