Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Food delivery company DoorDash has acquired Scotty Labs, a startup focused on developing autonomous and remote-controlled vehicle tech. Announcing the acquisition in a Medium post, Scotty Labs’ CEO Tobenna Arodiogbu said that the company’s “core belief” was that “autonomy and remote assistance will be the future of logistics,” but did not give more details on what specifically the company would be working on under DoorDash.
TechCrunch speculates that the acquisition is the latest attempt by DoorDash to reduce its reliance on human delivery drivers, by using more automated systems to deliver food. Back in 2017 the company partnered with Starship Technologies to test food deliveries using a small semi-autonomous robot, and earlier this…