Companies such as Uber, Alphabet and Tesla are investing heavily in the area of autonomy. There has therefore never been a better time for us to develop our own autonomous ground robots: we are able to benefit from a collective movement that is pushing forward the technology, legislation and cultural change surrounding un-manned vehicles.

We believe that sharing the same technology stack and approaches as autonomous cars will lead to our service robots being cheaper and more efficient to produce as the tech involved becomes more commonplace.

While we may initially surf the wave of autonomous cars, which we assume will have a shorter route to commercialisation and profitability, we feel that it is highly probable that service robots won't need to be as smart as autonomous cars as they will move at slower speeds and, on encountering a difficult situation, can simply stop without any of the grave consequences associated with malfunctioning AV's. They will also be designed in such a way that allows them to get help from a robot fleet manager, who will be able to teleoperate the robot when it encounters unique and unforeseen circumstances.

Although the connection between autonomous transport and autonomous delivery looks distant right now, we feel that they are falling more inline every day. Indeed, in the near future, they are likely to share the same vehicle sensors, 3D maps of our cities, and combined legislation laws. As they pose similar questions over their ethical and psychological impacts on our societies, they will probably also be subject to the same regulations concerning these questions.