Delivery robots - a part of tomorrow's cities?

The robot is called Hugo (Here U Go) and solutions from Univrses are used to better understand the infrastructure for micromobility in urban environments.

- Robots like Hugo mean that deliveries like food bags, medicines and packages can take up less space on roads than conventional delivery trucks, and can use roads that trucks can’t. Another important advantage is that Hugo have a very low Co2 footprint. The autonomous vehicles of the future already exists and if we're going manage the climate goals, we need to regulate the transport system more dynamically, using digital means, explains Daniel Rudmark, researcher at the state's road and transport research institute and project manager.

In October, it was time for Hugo to do his first test run in Helsingborg's city park. The purpose of the test was to collect and analyze data about the pedestrian and cycle path network. It was done by Hugo scanning the street environment using a mobile phone attached to the "robot body". The test will provide data with what kind of information the robot needs in order to understand where it should go and how it should behave in the urban environment. The test also included a demonstration for interested stakeholders in Helsingborg, both within the municipality as well as private companies. The day ended with a joint workshop, identifying potential use cases for a future pilot study.

- The test showed that the project’s core technologies worked well together and the workshop helped the project pinpoint situations where robots could be helpful so we now need to look more at specific sites where pilots is likely to be successful as well as enrolling new partners in the project before we can scale up the use of robots in more municipalities sums up Daniel.

The project is financed by Drive Sweden and participating actors are the city of Helsingborg, Univrses AB, Hugo Delivery AB, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI).