A Robot Pizza Delivery Question of the Day

If you are in a location that allows you to watch video, please stop whatever you are doing and WATCH THIS VIDEO ANNOUNCING DOMINO’S NEW PIZZA DELIVERY ROBOT:

I’ll go ahead and make all of the obvious jokes:

“I wish Domino’s spent as much time making its pizza as it did making that robot.”

“Can we get it to deliver something besides Domino’s?”

“I was going to put a third joke here, but there are really only two jokes to be made.”

Now that we’re done with THAT, let’s focus on the fact that an AUTONOMOUS PIZZA DELIVERY ROBOT IS REAL. It’s only going to be available to people living in Wellington, New Zealand for now, but it is still real.

As the AFP reports:

In a move enthusiastically backed by the New Zealand government, Domino’s said it was working with authorities on plans to roll out its DRU (Domino’s Robotic Unit).

The four-wheeler, developed in Australia, is just under a metre (three foot) high and contains a heated compartment that can hold up to 10 pizzas.

It is battery powered and uses on-board sensors to avoid obstacles, with Domino’s saying it can deliver pizzas within a 20 kilometre (12.5 mile) radius of a store before returning to recharge.

Customers are given a code when they order, which they enter onto a keypad to unlock the compartment containing their pizza.

I love the phrase “enthusiastically backed by the New Zealand government.” Everyone wants pizza delivery robots! Look at that cute little robot face!

Which brings me to our QOTD: Do you support the robot pizza delivery revolution? Would you buy Domino’s if it meant you got your pizza delivered by a robot? Is this the beginning of a new autonomous delivery future?

(That’s three questions, but I don’t care. We can handle this. We can probably also handle the question of “will autonomous delivery robots cause job loss, force people out of the gig economy, put Eat24 and Seamless out of business, and so on.” Because those are also questions that come right along with the robot delivering our pizza.)

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