Domino's trials trundling four-wheeled pizza delivery bot Domino's Pizza's Australian slice has decided wheeled drones trundling down footpaths are the pizza delivery mechanism of the future. The Domino's Robotic Unit sports LiDAR (light detection and ranging) object detection enabling the four-wheels Wall-E lookalike to deliver hot pizza and cold drinks without bumping into …
I gotta great idea! Let's make a delivery car that drives itself the sidewalks! Really slowly, and it'll be at just the right height to have poor visibility to pedestrians and traffic!
What could possibly go wrong?
... Yo, Dominos, It's your customers that are supposed to be the weed smokers!
So Amazon want to grab a slice of our airspace for their delivery drones, now Dominos (and doubtless many other delivery companies right behind them) want to take over our footpaths. Perhaps Coca-Cola would like to make a landgrab to deliver sugary carbonated products through our water pipes next?
Oh, I have a sure-fire idea - so the sky is a problem because airplanes and the ground is a problem because cars and pedestrians? Clearly, what we need is an army of parkour-bots delivering stuff jumping from rooftop to rooftop! In most places, that space has no traffic whatsoever - problem solved!
"I like the idea of pizza delivering mole robots."
I love that idea too, but I think there have been trial runs with something similar and it didn't end all that well...
For the price of a margherita* plus the cost of travelling to the false address I supply, I can get my hands on a robot designed by a military contractor, take it apart and learn their secrets.
I'd buy /that/ for a dollar!**
* and a phonecall if I don't have web access.
** or probably Au$ 4.99, but you get my point.
Ok, see this robot as a resource, same as a human delivery person.
So, instead of hiring a resource for $10/hour, who can deliver the pizza within 30 minutes on a motorbike/car, including the time it takes to prepare it, being able to fire it when misconducting, lay-off when business is going down, or hire more when it flourishes, able to avoid obstacles just for the sake of self-preservation, you are now going to invest stupid money into the development of a automatic toy, then pay stupid money again for each new unit, and get stuck with it in your inventory, -WALKS- the pizza to each address trundling through ever changing environments and needs paid operators and maintenance people to keep working, and guarantees every delivery to be late and cold.
Who comes up with this shit? Some new-age punk college drop-out thinking that everything robot is the hip way to go?
FX: Ding-dong, door opens
Robot: "Good evening, here is your Domino's pizza."
Householder: "Thank you"
Robot: [still holding box] "Did you order black olives?"
Householder: "Yes".
Robot: "Can't stand black olives"
Householder: "Just give me the pizza."
Robot: "I could have been a military robot and seen the world you know. But no, they made me deliver pizza instead."
Householder: "My pizza, please."
Robot: [sigh] "Here you are. It's probably cold by now. They usually are as all the heaters on my left side are broken. I've told them of course but no one listens."
Householder: "Goodbye" [closes door]
FX: Ding-dong, door opens.
Householder: "What now?"
Robot: "You forgot your garlic bread ... That's cold too."
Householder: "I didn't order garlic bread."
Robot: "Everyone gets free garlic bread in happy hour ... not that I have ever really been happy..."
Householder: [slams door]
FX: Ding-dong, door opens.
Robot: "Did I mention your foster parents are dead?"
...
...what?
And which bit is classic:
a) the greengrocer?
b) the greengrocer's mystery item?
c) more than one of the above?
Don't keep us in suspense. Tell us!
TELL us!
Perspiring minds want to know!*
* nature abhors an unfinished coda.**
** or do I mean unfinished codeine ?***
*** one is never really sure once the codeine is finished.
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