Hey, robot! Bring us a cup of coffee, will ya?

Rakuten is one of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies, and they’ve got an especially strong presence in Japan. At any given time, there are thousands of Rakuten orders en route to customers across the country…and some of those orders are being delivered by robots.

Following a test period that started last summer, towards the end of the year Rakuten began offering robot deliveries for customers in Tokyo’s Harumi neighborhood as well as parts of the Tsukishima and Kachidoki districts. Curious to try this futuristic new service out for himself, our ace reporter Mr. Sato headed out to Kachidoki Station, on the Oedo subway line. No sooner had he stepped out of the station and onto the street did he see one of the delivery bots cruising along the sidewalk.

Not only was it skillfully navigating the walkway, it also was smart enough to stop at the crosswalk and wait until the “walk” sign came on to proceed.

Still not yet decided about what to order for delivery, Mr. Sato strolled around the neighborhood for a bit, ending up at Harumi Futo Park, which is where the Olympic village was during the Tokyo Olympics.

▼ Though actually held in 2021, they’re still officially called the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

With the park’s seaside location, the cold winter winds coming off Tokyo Bay whipped at Mr. Sato, chilling his body…

…and so he made up his mind to warm himself up with some robot-delivered hot coffee!

Firing up the Rakuten shopping app and logging in to his Rakuten account, Mr. Sato saw that delivery was available from a Starbucks in the neighborhood, located inside the Triton Square building.

While the branch’s whole menu isn’t available, a number of food and drink items are, including tall-size coffee for 412 yen (US$2.65). There’s also a delivery charge of an additional 100 yen, but that’s still cheaper than a lot of other services, including Uber Eats.

At first, Mr. Sato was fantasizing about staying put right where he was while the robot brought his java to him. However, since the delivery robots have wheels, not legs, they can’t go up and down steps or traverse especially uneven terrain. Because of that, there are a number of pre-set delivery points that you choose from when placing your order.

▼ Thankfully there were a lot of different options for Mr. Sato to pick from.

You also select a delivery time. At the time Mr. Sato was placing his order, the fastest delivery was for 45 minutes from then. It felt like a bit of a long wait, but considering that his robot was going to have to go pick up his order first and then bring it to him, it didn’t seem too unreasonable.

Once he finalized his order, the app presented Mr. Sato with a numerical code to input on the robot’s display panel to open its lid and claim his coffee once it arrived. Then all that was left for him to do was head to the delivery point, as shown on the app’s map, and wait.

▼ お届け場所 = delivery point

Well, actually there was one more thing for Mr. Sato to do, which was to watch on the map to see the status of his delivery. In time, a delivery robot icon appeared, moving across the screen in real time as it got closer to the delivery point!

Watching its steady progress, Mr. Sato found himself cheering the robot on, and had to suppress his instinctual urge to run toward it and meet it half-way, like a loyal dog on its way to bring him his slippers.

Finally, the app showed that the robot had made its final turn and was now heading straight towards Mr. Sato. Looking up from the screen and turning his eyes in the direction the delivery was coming from…

…he could see it!

Rolling down the road towards him was the delivery bot, and it even appeared to have an eager smile!

▼ Look at him go!

It turns out that Rakuten uses multiple models of delivery robots, as this one was much more compact than the red one Mr. Sato had seen immediately after getting out of the subway station.

Just as the app had informed Mr. Sato, there was a numerical keypad, and so he punched in the code he’d been given, which unlocked the lid…

…and, as promised, inside was his Starbucks order!

Mr. Sato had been a little worried about all the potential sloshing and spilling that could have transpired during the cup of coffee’s journey, but to his pleasant surprise, not only was his order neat and tidy…

…but the coffee was still nice and hot too, having arrived in a timely and climate-controlled manner.

Once Mr. Sato had taken out his order and closed the lid, the robot scooted off to go get the goods for its next delivery.

So all in all, the Rakuten robot delivery went perfectly…but you could still argue that, in one way, isn’t exactly what Mr. Sato had been promised. See, in announcing the start of its robot deliveries in this part of Tokyo, Rakuten has said they’re offering “automated delivery by robots without any humans accompanying them.” However, if you take another look at our photos and videos…

…you’ll see that both times Mr. Sato spotted a Rakuten robot, there was also a human staff member walking with it.

Now, to be fair, in neither case did the human actually have to do anything in the robot’s place, so they appear to be there more as a precautionary safeguard than an absolute functional necessity. Still, their presence implies that Rakuten wants a human being present in case there’s some unforeseen trouble along the way. At the same time, the delivery fee of 100 yen is way too low for human accompaniment to be a permanent part of the robot delivery business model, so it’s clear that Rakuten’s ultimate goal for the program is for the robots to make their delivery runs completely on their own, once the company is sure they can handle the task.

Related: Rakuten press release, robot delivery webpage
Photos, video ©SoraNews24
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