Amazon acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

TechCrunch has discovered that Amazon stealthily acquired an urban delivery robot startup called Dispatch in 2017, bringing in both IP and talent from the company to the e-commerce giant. The Dispatch.AI website is still active — and press reports have even called its robot a rival to Scout — but the people behind Dispatch have actually been working for Amazon for well over a year. Back in 2014, when Starship Technologies first revealed its prototype urban delivery robot, it caught the attention of three young engineers who were working together at a New York real estate visualization company: Stav Braun, a computer vision expert; Uriah Baalke, an alumnus of legendary robotics lab Willow Garage; and Sonia Jin, a computer scientist from MIT.

Source: techcrunch.com