Autonomous deliveries: The first step in the driverless revolution

Kar-Go is designed to transform the delivery experience, which, like many disruptive technologies, starts with an app.

“What we're working on now is much like your Uber app; you can see on an app on your phone a map of where you are and where your car is,” explains Sachiti. “You can see it literally pull up outside, maybe right in your driveway: the closest place it can pull up.”

When the car does pull into your driveway, what you will be met with is a glossy, futuristic vehicle vaguely resembling a metallic dragon, powered by sophisticated AI and an electric engine. How you interact with it, however, is incredibly straightforward.

Even better, Kar-Go eliminates the tedious need to wait around for a delivery to arrive or, – perhaps worse – miss a delivery attempt.

“With us you'll never have that card saying 'sorry you were out' again,” says Sachiti. “Imagine your Uber app, where you can see where your vehicle is, because it's coming to you: we can technically do the same thing with the delivery now where it won’t come if you're not home or it'll only come when you want it to come.

“It’s on-demand delivery at its finest, where it doesn't matter what time of the day it is: if you order and there's someone to send it at 3am, if you're happy for it to turn up at 3am it will, because it’s just a robot – there's no one there.”

Kar-Go already exists as a fully functioning prototype, and now the Academy of Robotics has acquired equity funding in the form of a Crowdcube campaign that raised £321,000 and which is being matched by an unnamed organisation that Sachiti describes as one of the world’s largest tech companies. As a result, work has started on the full road-legal version of the vehicle, which is set to begin UK-based trials in 2018.

“We've essentially started building the final version of the car to hit the streets in about maybe five or six months, maybe a bit sooner,” explains Sachiti. “We're probably going to do official tests after a few months, where we test it ourselves on private land.

“Everything should work, but when you've got a new configuration there's a bit of tinkering to do to make sure everything is working as it should.”

“We think within three years this will be a standard. Our plan is to do a couple of trials in Europe and Asia simultaneously, and then in approximately 18 months from today we'll raise what we call our series A, which is bigger funding, which allows us to build several hundred units at once and then start scaling,” he says.

“These might still class as trial units, but still they'll be doing live deliveries to live customers here in the UK.”

When most people think of autonomous deliveries, the first word that pops into their heads is, of course, drones. But while Amazon has made a big song-and-dance about its currently entirely hypothetical Prime Air, Sachiti believes that they are a long way from being anywhere close to ready for at-home deliveries.

And he should know. Six years ago, having already made his name in the startup world with solar-powered digital advertising bins Clever Bins and digital concierge company MyCityVenue, he began seriously looking at drone deliveries as his next major project.

Already an expert in the business side of the venture, Sachiti enrolled in a degree in AI and robotics to, he says, “up my geek credentials”. However, the further he delved into the idea, the less viable drone deliveries became.

“Their biggest problem is social acceptance,” he says. “If you think about it carefully, how comfortable are you with a really, really, really loud sound of a drone outside your window five, six times a day doing your deliveries down your street?

“And this thing is loud; it’s louder than a car revving its engine; it’s like a washing machine at full tilt pretty much several times a day. We don't believe that people would be comfortable with that.”

While drones have a long road ahead if their proponents are to convince the public they are suitable for deliveries, the Academy of Robotics also has to make its own case if its dragon-like delivery vehicle is to be a success.

“How comfortable will people be with an autonomous car doing deliveries? We think they will be, that's why we went for that rather than drones, but I think the biggest hurdle with any new tech is people liking it,” explains Sachiti.

“Just think of Google Glass: Google released this amazing product Google Glass, but nobody seemed to like it. They're great technology, but I think the public's perception can perhaps be the biggest hazard with any tech like this.”

“They say kids are the harshest critics, so I decided we should go down the route where if it pulls up to a residential street, kids should be excited to see it, they should want to take a photo of it and think 'oh my gosh, it’s amazing'. If you can please kids and grandma, then you've won, and that's kind of the direction we're going for.

“So it should be friendly yet exciting, it should be a positive experience. That's why we didn't want to go for the traditional route, we thought lets really stand up.”

Of course, it’s not just about the public. For Kar-Go to be a success, it needs to also work for retailers.

However, on that front the Academy of Robotics looks set to be successful, as the driverless delivery vehicle resolves a long-held problem for retailers: right now when it comes to low-cost orders, no one but Amazon can make the business case work.

“With most retailers there's a sort of magic number, which is around the £25 and below mark. What happens with this number is that when – let's say for example a person buys a bunch of razor blades and the order value comes up to let's say £12 – if you go for standard package delivery, I think even Royal Mail doing the cheapest is about £6, £7,” he explains. “So that's up to 30-40% of the order value being just delivery.

Kar-Go, however, offers delivery at a fraction of the price, meaning retailers large and small can offer low-cost speedy delivery and thus lure you away from the behemoth that is Amazon.

“When you have a delivery van and you're a van driver, there's a cost of leasing that van, which will cost maybe £400-500 a week, and then there's the cost of labour, you have to pay the driver. With us, you pay a driver nothing, so the human cost is gone completely,” explains Sachiti. “And if you know the going market rate for a driver, a single car could take off £20,000-£30,000 just by switching to some of ours, just in labour only.

“Before you've gone to no-cost fuel, before you're gone to things like that our vehicle is significantly cheaper than a van anyway, so the savings are huge when you start multiplying multiples of several hundred or several thousand vehicles.”

Of course, one unavoidable aspect to Kar-Go is that it will, if successful, put delivery drivers at work. Every industry is facing automation, and nothing will stop it coming to deliveries in some form.

But for Sachiti, driverless vehicles are simply a new technology that is poised to create its own job opportunities, much as others have in the past.

“It’s the same thing happening again: we're now in a city of manual driving and yes a lot of people are employed in this industry, but if you give it time past that transition period, I think like technology’s always done, we're going to find a new type of job that's going to exist that wouldn't have existed, and – just like its happened always – be completely for the better.”

Then there are the other benefits that come from the oncoming driverless revolution.

“I think the big one is worldwide there's about 1.2 million deaths a year from car accidents, and autonomous cars can reduce this figure dramatically,” Sachiti says. “Like, to literally double or triple figures only.”

With a serious business case, it’s perhaps no surprise that Kar-Go is turning major heads, with some of Europe’s biggest fast-moving consumer goods brands expressing significant interest. What’s more, the company is partnering with a soon-to-be-named technology company that will allow it to take the technology beyond the UK’s shores and out into the world.

“One of our investors we're finalising papers with is a very big technology company not based in Europe,” says Sachiti. “They're quite a big household name and in their home country they're quite interested in trialling that at the same time there, so we can be doing it from two fronts. Once I have more information on that I will be able to share, but, for now, not quite yet.”

In the long run, however, the potential for Kar-Go goes far beyond retail.

“When we say delivery most people assume this is for impulse purchases online, but this could solve things like meals-on-wheels and medication. If you think of things like meals-on-wheels where the cost of producing the meal is next-to-nothing, the biggest cost, again, is delivery; or getting medicine across a town or something, people wait when they don't have to, or someone's ill, imagine we can get it right to your door for pretty much nothing all the time, at any time,” explains Sachiti.

“And this is just level one. If we can do this with it now, imagine as time goes on, as it gets better and better, there's going to be many more uses that even I can't articulate yet.”