There is a new delivery robot in town, and its name is Dot.
DoorDash announced a new delivery bot today, confirming months of rumors that they were working on their own robot. The robot, developed entirely by its internal team of DoorDash Labs, is the first bet of the company that brings the delivery of automated needs and the autonomy of the road, which shows that the company sees holding a basic robotic stack that powers the delivery as a priority.
The Dot, which is about one-tenth the size of a car, can reach speeds of up to 20 mph. DoorDash says the system is designed to traverse sidewalks, bike lanes, and neighborhood streets, providing flexibility for navigating complex urban environments. Watching the video of Dot (see below), it’s clear that the robot really does move.
“(Dot) is small enough to navigate doorways and driveways, fast enough to maintain food quality, and smart enough to optimize delivery routes,” said Stanley Tang, Founder and Head of DoorDash Labs. “Every design decision, from its compact size to its speed to its sensor suite, comes from analyzing billions of deliveries in our global space and understanding what really moves the needle for retailers and consumers.”
As part of the Dot rollout, the company also introduced the Autonomous Delivery Platform (ADP). The company describes ADP as an AI-driven dispatcher that chooses between human Dashers, robots, drones, or other methods based on order type, distance, and the needs of the seller.
The company described its effort to build an autonomous stack in a post on its engineering blog. According to the company, Dot continuously imports multi-modal sensor data (LiDAR, cameras, radar) to detect obstacles, classify terrain, and localize itself within complex urban settings. That raw sensor input is fed into a vision module, which creates a dynamic environmental model, identifying pedestrians, street furniture, curbs, driveways, and the movement patterns of nearby agents. Above the visual player is a planning layer, which defines safe and efficient routes, lane changes, sidewalk instructions, and mode changes (eg splitting a bike lane into a sidewalk). Finally, the controller or actuation layer translates those programmed trajectories into smooth motor commands, ensuring payload stability and maintaining strict compliance with safety constraints.
In some ways, the announcement of ADP as an orchestration layer is perhaps more interesting than the debut of DoorDash’s traditional robot, as it marks a major step forward for DoorDash to build a multimodal delivery network management system. This plan will guide “handoffs today while laying the foundation for reliable, efficient delivery as independence scales.” The company said it plans to collaborate with third-party delivery technology companies (like, perhaps, drone delivery and other street delivery companies like Coco, with which it already partners).
With the announcement of DoorDash, it is a task to look at the possible impact on the third-party partners of the delivery company’s technology such as Coco Robotics. DoorDash launched its partnership with Coco Robotics, whose bright pink roadside robots have been operating under the DoorDash app in Los Angeles and Chicago since 2021. Although DoorDash says it plans to work with third-party providers, branding Dot as “purpose-built for local commerce” suggests a long-term goal of moving its outdoor robot to and from its outdoor robots.
After this story was published, a DoorDash representative reached out to comment on their relationship with Coco and other partners: “Coco is a long-term partner, providing street robot delivery to DoorDash customers in select US markets – including Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago – and in the EU, Helsinki – and we’re focused on continuing to scale that relationship. Designed for busy urban areas and sidewalks, Coco is designed to handle a range of delivery conditions. As DoorDash handles millions of deliveries per day, different types of robots are needed in different situations – from dense urban areas to suburban areas – which is why our multimodal strategy is so important, and why Coco is an important part of that strategy.“
You also have to wonder if DoorDash’s move to build its own delivery bot is a response to Uber’s strategic partnership with Serve. Some may recall that Serve, which was acquired by Uber when it acquired its partners, spun off from Uber in 2021, and that Uber still owns a portion of Serve Robotics and that the two companies work closely together.