Serve Robotics opens the technology behind its delivery robots to other robot makers

Serve Robotics, the sidewalk delivery robot company that spun out of Uber's acquisition of Postmates in 2021, has launched Physical AI Services, a business that sells the tools behind its own fleet to other companies building robots. Bedrock Robotics, which develops autonomous systems for heavy construction equipment, is among the launch customers. Serve announced the business with its third-quarter results and said it is also working with T-Mobile to bring computing power closer to robots.

The business launches with three products. Serve Link connects machines in the field to models, monitoring and training systems running in data centres, even over unreliable networks; Bedrock uses it to connect its machines over Wi-Fi, LTE, 5G and satellite. Serve Data Curator surfaces the rare moments in fleet data worth training on, and a data catalog drawn from Serve's sidewalk deployments teaches models how to understand places such as city sidewalks. "I kind of think of it as the AWS moment," said chief executive and co-founder Ali Kashani.

Serve says it has deployed more than 2,000 robots in more than 40 cities and 27 hospitals, the hospitals through its acquisition of Diligent Robotics. Its delivery business is shifting away from Uber toward partners including DoorDash and Wonder.