Yandex.Rover Now Makes Restaurant Deliveries Within Yandex.Eats
By: Yandex Self-Driving Team
Tags: Self Driving Cars, Delivery, AI, Robotics

Self-driving technologies are slowly but steadily becoming an integral part of our lives as they begin to solve an increasing number of different tasks. Many services can greatly benefit from using these technologies. At Yandex, we have a whole ecosystem of services the goal of which is to quickly deliver groceries, restaurant meals and different goods to our customers. These services are already starting to take advantage of self-driving technologies. Now customers who order restaurant food in the Yandex.Eats app in Russian cities of Moscow and Innopolis can select driverless delivery from these restaurants. Yandex.Eats is more than just an app, it is a major food and grocery delivery service in Russia with more than 30,000 merchants across 166 cities. Orders made with its help can now be delivered by the Yandex.Rover delivery robot.

In Moscow these deliveries were first launched in the White Square (Belaya Ploshchad) area in central Moscow which is where offices of major Russian and international companies, as well as some of the city’s most popular cafes and restaurants, are located. Customers can choose delivery by one of our robots in the Yandex.Eats app. The rover will pick up their order from the restaurant and take it to a specific location. Our users can track the location of the rover and the status of their order within the app. To receive it, customers need to simply unlock the rover from their smartphone and lift the top. As more restaurants join the driverless delivery network, robot deliveries will grow in popularity and reach.

“In the last few years we’ve been seeing a constant growth in demand for delivery services and the events of 2020 have only advanced this trend. This is why now we have robots coming to people’s rescue. They will take on part of the delivery load which will allow us to retain delivery speed as the demand for our services grows. Rovers can deliver restaurant meals, groceries, orders from online stores and will slowly but steadily become a normal part of city life,” said Dmitry Polishchuk, CEO, Yandex Self-Driving Group.

In addition to operating in Moscow, rovers now roam the streets of Innopolis, a hi-tech innovation hub some 450 miles east of Moscow. In this tech hub with unique infrastructure, rovers don’t just work with restaurants but have become a part of the city’s everyday life. Innopolis has hired Yandex.Rover to help people living there with their daily tasks. The driverless robots already deliver restaurant meals and will soon begin delivering groceries and orders from online stores. What’s more, Innopolis residents get to use these robots free of charge.

Innopolis is famous for cold and snowy winters with rainy and windy periods between seasons. Yandex.Rover is powered by the same technology as our self-driving cars that are familiar with a wide range of bad weather conditions, which account for over half of our testing time.

A testing ground for countless new technologies, Innopolis also welcomed Europe’s first robotaxi service by Yandex more than two years ago. Yandex’s self-driving vehicles can be booked from the company’s ride-hailing app, Yandex Go, and will carry passengers within the city limits. Since the launch of Yandex’s driverless taxi service in 2019, it has seen more than 12,000 bookings. And now Innopolis residents and visitors can also enjoy Yandex’s autonomous delivery service. We hope that they will enjoy a hot lunch delivered to their doorstep on a cold winter day, quickly and contactlessly.