The engineers at Domino's DLAB in Australia revealed DRU earlier this year, the Domino's Robotic Unit. The pizza company partnered with Australian firm Marathon Targets to transfer military technology to a logistics application.
Marathon has a system of rolling targets that exhibit human behavior to train military personnel. The targets make up a Robotic Opposing Force (ROPFOR) that acts as an enemy unit for soldiers to train response time and strategy.
Engineers from Domino's and Marathon worked together to apply lessons learned from creating robotic targets to the pizza delivery business. The four wheel drive chassis finds its way using a battery of sensors and gps. The unit can move up to 20 kilometers per hour and has a 740 x 1030 millimeter footprint with a 922 millimeter height.
This feels more like a public relation stunt than an actual project that will be delivering pizzas to us in the near future. There's great innovation here, from the obstacle sensing and avoidance technology to the lock that requires a code sent to the pizza customer's cell phone. The video shows DRU moving around obstacles but not moving up or down curbs on uneven terrain. We might need more data to say whether or not the robot can navigate pitted streets and sidewalks in Michigan. Human nature is also a factor, and we've seen that people can be cruel to robots.
It's much more likely that we'll see the DXP, a delivery vehicle based off of a Chevy Spark, bringing us pizzas before DRU hits the streets in North America, but it's great to see engineers taking proven technology and adapting it to other industries. The Global Industrial Robotics Market in Food and Beverage Industry report says that robotics in the food and beverage industry will grow by 29% between 2015 and 2019, so we can expect more robots doing more tasks in the near future.