Delivery Robots Deployed at Peachtree Corners Smart City

Estonian robot delivery company Clevon’s global rollout is gathering pace as the company has confirmed a second operation in the United States.

The company’s autonomous robot carriers (ARCs) are the latest addition to Peachtree Corners, the pioneering smart city created 20 miles north of Atlanta that is home to more than 45,000 people.

Clevon’s arrival in Georgia follows the launch of an automated parcel delivery service in Northlake, Texas in July.

Peachtree Corners’ connected infrastructure and 5G allow drivers, pedestrians and autonomous vehicles (AVs) to share public roads every day, and Clevon’s ARCs will join the city’s Curiosity Lab ecosystem, where their ability to collect and deliver orders from warehouses, retail stores and dark stores will be thoroughly assessed.

The Clevon 1 ARC is broadly half the size of a traditional van, at 98 inches long, and is 61 inches high, but its modular design allows multiple storage configurations, while its automated functionality is facilitated by a camera and radar stack that provides 360-degree visibility and obstacle detection. The driving system leverages T-Mobile’s IoT solutions, including remote monitoring.

Its capabilities have already been demonstrated on a number of commercial operations outside the U.S. 

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Earlier this year, the company announced the launch of what it hailed as Europe’s first fleet of ARCs operating on public roads in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The deployment, run in tandem with delivery transportation platform LastMile and supermarket chain IKI, saw the ARCs collecting goods from an IKI store and delivering them to customers’ homes in the city center.

This followed a two-month pilot in association with DHL in the Old Town of Tallinn, the capital of Clevon’s home nation of Estonia, in 2022.

In the U.S. the ARCs can also operate on public roads, and can deliver multiple shipments on a single trip. One of the key focuses of their time in the Curiosity Lab will be to explore live testing for 5G adoption in partnership with T-Mobile.

Sander Sebastian Agur, Clevon’s Chief Executive Officer, welcomed the opportunity the deployment at Peachtree Corners offers. “It was only fitting to bring our second major operation here in the United States to one of the most advanced smart city environments in the world at Peachtree Corners,” he said. 

“A future-forward environment like this – complete with city-owned smart infrastructure, T-Mobile’s best-in-class network and opportunities to interact with connected vehicles and people and businesses – is invaluable to our continued efforts to optimize autonomous robot carrier operation, including how they will navigate through real-world situations.”

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Brandon Branham, Curiosity Lab executive director, added: “From a city perspective, we are always looking to improve our residents’ everyday lives with exciting new technologies. Showcasing how robotic solutions can help enhance package delivery operations while reducing congestion and emissions gives us a further peek into a brighter future.”