Drone and Robot Book Delivery

Getting books to customers is easy (well, easy if you don’t have global pandemic to deal with, anyway) – they visit the library or a bookmobile, and pick up their book.

How about using drones or robots to deliver books?Well … both are being done right now.

Drone book delivery

Google’s Wing has been testing drone delivery in a variety of ways. In Christiansburg, VA, they have partnered with FedEx and Walgreens to deliver products to people’s houses.

A local school district has recently partnered with Wing to deliver books to school kids over the summer! Very cool idea.

Here are a couple of articles about the drone delivery service in Christiansburg:

• Google’s Drone Delivery Service Drops Library Books to Kids
• Google-backed drones will drop library books so kids in Virginia can do their summer reading

Robot Book Delivery

A couple of libraries and university campuses are starting to use different types of robot delivery services to deliver books and other things to customers and students.

The robots are a bit pricey. And I’m not sure they work in all local settings. But still … pretty cool idea! The Starship delivery robots cost around $5500.

Here are some articles about robot book deliveries:

• The engineers behind Google’s Bookbot have launched a delivery robot startup
• Redwood City Library to make robot deliveries
• Thousands of autonomous delivery robots are about to descend on US college campuses (focused on general campus delivery)
• Why sidewalk delivery robots still need safety drivers

Here’s hoping for more projects like these in the near future!

Starship Robot image from The Verge article