Can you imagine a world where robots deliver packages straight to your apartment unit? It might seem like a futuristic innovation straight out of The Jetsons, but a Brighton-based company is looking to make it a reality today.
Light Line Delivery Corp., founded in 2018, is developing autonomous robots that deliver packages from an apartment building's lobby straight to a tenant’s unit.
The process works like this: When a package arrives, the tenant receives a notification via smartphone, at which point they can request a package delivery through Light Line’s mobile app. After the concierge puts the package in the robot, it will head toward the tenant’s door. Once it arrives, another smartphone notification lets the resident know their package is at the door. A button on the app that says “open the lid” enables the tenant to retrieve the package so the robot can return to the lobby.
“The low-hanging fruit in this industry is hospitals, hotels [and] manufacturers, because you're easily making the argument that you're cutting out a line-item expense," said Brett Wagner, CEO and co-founder of Light Line. "This is more of creating an experience and adding value to the property as an amenity. ... The idea is to create this last-mile final interface to residents."
By creating autonomous delivery robots for mid- and high-rise apartments, tenants will no longer have to worry about “package burden,” or the inconvenience of getting dressed, traveling to the front desk/mailroom, and dealing with other humans while picking up your mail. There are also benefits for property owners.
“One of the things that we're aiming to do is get packages out of the package rooms and lockers quicker. The second thing is to make the overall building more attractive," said Wagner. "This is an amenity that kind of raised eyebrows: Developers and apartments say, ‘I’m spending so much money on gyms and no one ever uses (them),’ but this is something people would use all the time, and the relative estimated cost is much, much cheaper."
Another benefit for properties? Light Line can keep apartment communities safer. Instead of having random delivery people roaming buildings and searching for a particular unit to drop off food or packages, the couriers can simply place the item in a building’s autonomous robot for delivery.
Lessons learned after shutdown
Light Line is not Wagner’s first business venture. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work in finance. While there, he started a company called Wave, which focused on outdoor drone delivery.
Although Wave shut down, Wagner said he learned a few valuable lessons from his first startup. “For Wave, the market was there, but building an autonomous robot for outdoor delivery was difficult. The amount of capital and resources that it was going to take to get to that point was a lot. For me, I think one of the biggest lessons I learned is, go after something that might be a little more palatable,” he said.
With Light Line, Wagner decided to narrow his focus and tackle the question: “What if we put these robots inside buildings and delivered things the last 500 feet?”
To test the concept, Wagner bought a robot and an Xbox controller, hooked it up and put a laundry basket on top of the machine. Then with the robot, he approached a property and asked if the building would test out the company’s app.
“For three weeks in an apartment in Cambridge, I walked around with a robot, and would drive it around with the Xbox controller, and just deliver packages from the front desk out to people's rooms...And people liked it," Wagner said. "People used this thing, so we decided to figure out how to build it.”
Currently, the company is doing a pilot program, where properties can sign up and test out the robot for four weeks. So far, three buildings have signed up to participate. Light Line is hoping to officially launch in 2022.
“At the end of the day, what are we really trying to do — it sounds kind of silly — but we just want to respect people's time and space,” said Wagner.
