Ottonomy’s new delivery robot gets an automatic package dispenser

The robots are slowly but surely conquering this year’s CES. During today’s press preview, Ottonomy debuted a new model being added to the New York firm’s army of delivery robots. Yeti stands out from other Ottobot models primarily thanks to the addition of a clever auto dispense mechanism designed to eliminate the need for a person to be present to receive the package. The startup calls the product “the first fully autonomous unattended delivery robot on the market.”

Once it reaches its destination, the last-mile-delivery bot can drop its contents onto a doorstep or transfer them into a compatible locker for safe keeping until the human arrives to pick them up. Another interesting angle here is the potential for product returns — specifically, a customer could put the robot to use to get unwanted product back to the original seller.

Yeti follows the late 2022 addition of another robot, Ottobot 2.0, which brings some interesting customization options to the table, including the ability to swap out different modular bins for different sorts of deliveries.

The firm has a number of concurrent programs in cities across the world, including Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Oslo and Madrid. It’s also working to expand to additional markets in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. Here in the States, it’s partnered with Verizon.

“During the validation processes we ran pilots with airports, retailers and postal services which gave us the deep insights we needed on the most effective use cases and scalability,” says co-founder and CEO Ritukar Vijay. “With our strategic alignment with Verizon and other enterprises, we are in the prime position to fill the gap that companies like Amazon and Fedex were not able to. As demand and the use cases for autonomous unassisted delivery continue to grow, we are positioned to provide robots as a service for restaurants, retailers and beyond.”

Ottonomy announced a $3.3 million seed raise last August.

Published in: TechCrunch