Nvidia invests $10M in sidewalk robot delivery company Serve Robotics –
Summary
The investment – Nvidia’s first in the sidewalk delivery space – is part of a long-term collaboration that will see the two companies work together toward advancing their own wheelhouses of robotic technology. “What we’re excited about is the prospect of working closely with Serve to push the limits of what is possible on last-mile delivery problems.” Serve’s robots, which the startup says are capable of operating in specific geofenced areas without a remote operator for safety, currently rely on Nvidia’s Jetson edge AI platform, the hardware, or compute module, that sits inside the robot and powers autonomous movement. “Nvidia is one of the most critical companies to the robotics space as a whole, and they’re also investing in the tools, so it just makes sense for us to work close together given this is a developing space.” There are different approaches to commercialization within sidewalk delivery being trialed now. Companies like Coco and, until recently, Tortoise, have leveraged remote operators to drive robots to their destinations, giving them a quicker and easier path to market than aiming for full autonomy. Serve is choosing to go the more technically challenging route to full self-driving from the get-go, which means it needs serious compute power to handle the processing of data in real time.
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