Yandex.Rover is the newest autonomous vehicle from the Russian self-driving car company
From self-driving cars to...autonomous delivery bots.
That's what Yandex, the Russian company most similar to Google and Alphabet complete with a self-driving car unit, is pivoting to with the Yandex.Rover. The company isn't abandoning its robo-taxis — in fact, it just started testing its growing fleet of self-driving cars in Detroit— but the new six-wheeled vehicles are joining the autonomous collection.
The company announced Thursday that its delivery bots, named Yandex.Rover (like the space exploration vehicles that have explored the Moon), started testing in Moscow at Yandex's headquarters. They can self-navigate around objects and obstacles and are only about the size of a suitcase.
To begin, the bots are bringing Yandex employees small packages. That's no small feat: Yandex HQ houses 7,000 employees and includes multiple buildings, restaurants, and parking garages.
To properly test the vehicle's autonomous capabilities, the vehicles are venturing out during the day and night. no matter the weather. They're capable of getting to their destination autonomously using LiDAR light-measuring sensors and other sensors. For now, though, there's a remote operator keeping track of each unit.
The vehicle does indeed look like a rover. But it also looks like most other delivery bots like Amazon's Scout, KiwiBot, and Starship seen on college campuses, among others starting to appear on sidewalks.
Eventually the Yandex delivery bots will move beyond the confines of Yandex HQ and start wheeling through Moscow and beyond. Yandex expects to use the bot for food deliveries and other services. Yandex.Rover is following a similar testing procedure as Yandex's self-driving cars. That started with employees testing on private road before venturing out into public.
Yandex might be based in Russia (with testing in Moscow, Innopolis, and Skolkovo) but its cars are testing outside the country in Las Vegas, Tel Aviv, and now Detroit. The company has hit 1 million autonomous miles across all those locations.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
