this is amazon scout, the autonomous blue delivery bot roaming one american neighborhood

strolling along the sunny, suburban streets of the above promotional video, a baby-blue amazon scout fits right in. amazon’s six-wheeled self driving solution to last mile delivery is fully electric and ready to swerve slowly around squirrels in neighborhoods like this one — alongside a human buddy, of course. the scout’s first mission is an undisclosed community in snohomish county, washington, where six scouts and their buddies are to deliver packages for residents at their maximum speed: a walking pace.

all images courtesy of amazon

snohomish county executive, dave somers says ‘we are delighted to welcome amazon scout into our community. similar to amazon, we are always looking for new ways to better deliver service to our residents. from the latest amazon innovation to cutting edge technology, snohomish county is a great place for entrepreneurial creativity.’ that’s lovely — but to imagine the scouts traversing bodegas and underpasses around the designboom NY office in brooklyn is to imagine blue snails cursed to roll unevenly over litter and to be unfairly judged by thousands of moving-people with much different definitions of a walking pace. 

daylight hours, weekdays only, human buddies — the scouts are going to have a nice and easy test ride in washington, minus a precocious cat or five. even then, the scout is more afraid of us than we are of it, which is more to be said for what is going on in arizona. unlike self-driving cars, these friendly scouts could be in your neighborhood soon.

there’s no news yet on how this system could increase efficiency, but let’s give the amazon scout some time to run into a few trees and die randomly before we demand charts and graphs on how it will make our lives better and amazon investors wealthier. for now, they’re just six, cute slow-rolling robots giving a neighborhood an extra hand and a pop of blue.