Starship Technologies

Starship Technologies is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles.[1] The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia and in Helsinki, Finland.[2] Starship also has offices in London, UK, Germany, Washington, DC and Mountain View, California.[3]

Starship Technologies
IndustryRobotics
Logistics
FoundedJune 11, 2014 (2014-06-11) in Tallinn, Estonia
FoundersJanus Friis
Ahti Heinla
Headquarters
San Francisco
,
United States
Areas served
United States
United Kingdom
Germany
Estonia
Finland
Key people
Ahti Heinla (CTO),
Alastair Westgarth (CEO)
ProductsDelivery robots
ServicesLast mile delivery
Websitewww.starship.xyz

In January and February 2022, Starship raised nearly $100 million in funding from European Investment Bank and venture investors which is expected to be put towards research and development and 1,700 additional robots to the company’s fleet.[4] The company has raised approximately $202 million since being founded in 2014.[4]

History
A line of Starship Technologies delivery robots at the University of Mississippi in 2021

Starship Technologies was founded by Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla.[5] Initially, it was called Project Echo.[2] A core team of the company became the team Kuukulgur, which led by Ahti Heinla had participated in NASA Centennial Challenge by building experimental sample retrieval robots.[2] Starship Technologies OÜ was registered on 11 June 2014 in Tallinn, Estonia.[6] Starship Technologies, Inc., a Delaware corporation, was registered in San Francisco, United States, on 28 September 2016.[7]

Starship Technologies launched pilot services in 2016, in the US and the UK among other countries, with commercial services launched in 2017.[8] In April 2018, Starship launched its autonomous delivery service in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, in partnership with Co-op and Tesco.[9] In March 2020, Starship became the first robot delivery service to operate in a British town center with the rollout of its service in Milton Keynes.[10] Milton Keynes currently has the 'world's largest autonomous robot fleet'[11]

In January 2019, Starship partnered with Sodexo to launch robot food delivery services at George Mason University. With a fleet of 25 robots at launch, this was the largest implementation of autonomous robot food delivery services on a university campus that time.[12][13] In 2019, it expanded its services to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Purdue University in West Lafayette, University of Pittsburgh, James Madison University in Virginia, University of Wisconsin in Madison, University of Houston, and University of Texas at Dallas.[14]

A Starship robot delivering food to students at Oregon State University

In 2020, Starship expanded operations to the University of Mississippi and Bowling Green State University.[15][16][17]

In March 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic, Starship made a large number of redundancies. However, half a year later, and after the universities reopened, it rehired many of the staff.[18] [19][20][21]

In October 2021, Starship announced that its autonomous delivery robots have completed 2 million deliveries worldwide, and have surpassed 100,000 road crossings daily.[22] [23] According to the company, it reached 100,000 deliveries in August 2019 and 500,000 deliveries in June 2020.[24]

As of January 2022, Starship’s autonomous delivery robots have made more than 2.5 million autonomous deliveries, and have traveled over 3 million miles globally.[1][25] On average, the fleet makes 10,000 autonomous deliveries per day.[1]

Operations
A close up of a Starship delivery robot operating in the winter, with its camera array visible

Starship develops and operates the last mile delivery robots. The electric-powered robots ride on sidewalks at a pedestrian speed, with a max speed of 6 kilometres per hour (3.7 mph), can be remote-controlled if autonomous operation fails, and will only be used for relatively short-range local delivery.[8] The robots use feature detection of edges and mapping techniques to determine the suitability of navigable terrain.[26] The robot weighs 55 pounds (25 kg) unloaded, and can hold up to 20 pounds (9.1 kg) of deliveries.[27] Their average battery life is 18 hours, and the typical robot can travel around 40km per day.[1] The robots are equipped with a sensor suite that includes cameras, GPS inertial measurement unit, ultrasonic sensors, radar, and possibly also other sensors but notably no lidar.[28] The robots have speakers, so they can communicate with humans they meet. Users order deliveries through Starship via the company’s iOS and Android applications.[1] Once the robot arrives to make a delivery, the user receives an alert and can unlock the robot through the app once their identity has been verified through biometric authentication technology.[29]

Before operating commercially, the service has been tested in over 100 cities and 20 countries around the world.[30] The company operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Estonia. From 2019 onwards, Starship focuses mainly on delivery services on college campuses. It has announced plans to expand its service to 100 university campuses in the United States, with the goal of reaching one million students.[31][32] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Starship expanded the number of delivery robots used for grocery in both the UK,[33][34] and in the US to help with the delivery driver shortage.[35][1]

Sustainability

Starship technology operates delivery robots that are powered by zero carbon electricity, and are a part of an ecosystem that Milton Keynes is gearing towards the council’s commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030 in order to face climate change.[36] Starship Technologies worked in conjunction with the Milton Keynes Council to conduct a study to review the impact of zero-emissions robots in cities over the course of 3 ½ years.[36][37] Since launching the study in 2018, Starship’s fleet has prevented 280,000 car journeys, and over 500,000 miles traveled in cars, leading to 137 tons of CO2 saved, and 22kg of NOx saved.[36][37][38]

Corporate matters

The Starship's original headquarters were established in London but were moved to San Francisco in 2018.[39] Its engineering operations are located in Tallinn, Estonia and in Helsinki, Finland.[2]

In 2014–2018, Allan Martinson served as the chief operating officer of Starship.[2] In 2018, the chief executive officer Ahti Heinla switched to the position of the chief technology officer and Lex Bayer, Airbnb's former head of business development, payments, and Airbnb for business, was hired as the new CEO.[40] Starship hired Alastair Westgarth, former CEO of Google X company, Loon, as their CEO in June 2021.[41]

By 2019, Starship had received US$85 million in venture funding.[31][32] In addition to Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, other investors include Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, Morpheus Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, MetaPlanet Holdings, Daimler AG, Grishin Robotics, ZX Ventures, Playfair Capital and others.[32][40][42]

In January 2022, Starship received a €50 million investment from the European Investment Bank.[1]

Starship also announced a partnership with Veriff in January 2022 to provide authentication and re-verification services for its fleet of autonomous delivery robots in the UK.[43] This partnership makes Starship the first company to create a fully autonomous end-to-end delivery service for age restricted items.[29]

Economically, Starship’s robots are considered to be cheaper than a human equivalent when compared to human-staffed delivery services like DoorDash. Each of Starship’s 1,200 robots cost as much as a laptop and can run for 18 hours after being charged.[44][45]

See also
  • Nuro, a similar autonomous delivery vehicle, though larger at the size of a tiny car, and driving on the road.
  • Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc focused on autonomous driving technology development.
  • Cruise, a subsidiary of Tesla that hosts a self-driving vehicle ride-sharing service.

References
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  2. "Allan Martinson: the perfect storm for Estonian startups". Enterprise Estonia. December 2018. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  3. "About Us". Starship Technologies. 2016. Retrieved 30 August 2016.
  4. Vartabedian, Marc (1 March 2022). "Starship, a Robot Food-Delivery Startup, Nets $100 Million". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  5. Sawers, Paul (31 October 2018). "Starship Technologies launches commercial package delivery service using autonomous robots". VentureBeat. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  6. "Starship Technologies OÜ". e-Krediidiinfo (in Estonian). Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  7. "Statement and Designation by Foreign Corporation. Starship Technologies, Inc". Alex Padilla, California Secretary of State. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  8. Kottasova, Ivana (3 November 2015). "Forget drones, here come delivery robots". CNN Business. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  9. Farrell, Steve (1 April 2019). "Co-op expands robot deliveries to second store". The Grocer. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  10. Ingham, Lucy (16 March 2020). "Robot delivery service comes to first UK town centre". Verdict. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  11. "Milton Keynes now has 'world's largest autonomous robot fleet' as Starship expand further". MKFM. Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  12. "World's Largest Fleet of Delivery Robots on a University Campus Launched by Sodexo and Starship Technologies" (Press release). Sodexo. 22 January 2019. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  13. Clark, Mary Lee (22 January 2019). "There are robots on campus—here's what you need to know". George Mason University. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  14. Repko, Melissa (6 January 2020). "On University of Texas at Dallas' growing campus, meal-delivering robots make splashy debut". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
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  19. "Teatmik.ee".
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