On Tuesday, DoorDash unveiled Dot, a small robot it built in-house that can autonomously drive on roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks to deliver food and small packages at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. Dot is designed to look friendly and even cartoonish — painted bright red, with big LED eyes and a mouth that swings open to reveal where it holds your food — though I’d argue it’s slightly creepy.
DoorDash says it’s already testing the robot with early access partners in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and plans to make it available to the region’s 1.6 million residents by the end of 2025.
It might sound odd for a food-delivery app like DoorDash to compete with trillion-dollar companies like Google and Tesla on autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. In San Francisco, Austin, and cities around the country, hailing a robotaxi is already commonplace for many residents. DoorDash argues that a similar reckoning is coming for the food delivery space, and that Dot’s size and design are key.
The stakes are high for this little, cute (terrifying?) robot. Countless startups have flamed out in the AV space, with some even facing penalties and fines when their machines caused harm. Robotaxis have also become a symbol for Silicon Valley’s broader automation push — and a target for public anger. Waymos have been vandalized on city streets, and it’s easy to imagine Dots becoming the next symbol of that tension.
DoorDash unveils Dot at its San Francisco headquarters. (Credit: Maxwell Zeff)
On Monday at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang told reporters that autonomous delivery in suburbs and cities could become a large market. Tang said a key to delivery robots is navigating “the first and last ten feet,” referring to picking up and dropping off deliveries. Sidewalk robots, such as those developed by companies like Serve Robotics, address this challenge of negotiating tight spaces, but they can’t drive on roads or at high speeds like Dot can.
“You don’t always need a full-sized car to deliver a tube of toothpaste or pack of diapers,” said Tang. “Dot is purpose-built for the millions of deliveries we facilitate every day. It is small enough to navigate doorways and driveways, fast enough to maintain food quality, and smart enough to optimize the best routes for delivery.”
Dot has four wheels and stands less than five feet tall and three feet wide. It’s roughly a tenth the size of a car and weighs 350 pounds. Press a button on what can only be described as Dot’s “mouth,” and enough cargo space is revealed to fit six pizza boxes or up to 30 pounds of food. There are various inserts that merchants can put inside of a Dot to meet their needs, including cupholders and coolers.
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One of the inserts inside Dot’s cargo space (Credit: DoorDash)
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