A Tiny Step Forward

MIAMI’S NEWEST FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD CYBORG COMES FROM CANADA

BY YOUSRA BENKIRANE

You’re on your way to work, walking down the street. You stop at a crosswalk waiting to go. You look over and there’s a knee-high, pink box on three wheels. The crosswalk indicates you can go, and the box rolls on. There's no need to be concerned. It’s just Geoffrey, the friendly neighborhood robot, making its rounds.

If you live or work in the Downtown Miami area, you’ve probably noticed the newest additions to the bustling neighborhood. For the past few months, a fleet of 20 small pink robots with digitized hearts for eyes has been cruising the area, offering free delivery services to anyone interested. Why this branding? “It’s helpful to humanize them a little bit and make them more approachable,” says Brendan McGonigle, head of revenue at Tiny Mile, the Canadian company providing the robots.

Headquartered in Toronto, Tiny Mile was founded by two exUber engineers who developed remotely-controlled delivery robots. With 12 hours of battery life, the bots – all anthropomorphically nicknamed Geoffrey – travel at a speed of 3.7 miles per hour and are equipped with cameras and GPS for navigation. The robots can carry up to 20 pounds, covering a one-mile radius, and they operate with a 5G connection, enabling high-definition video data processing for improved safety and real-time decision-making.

Initially, Tiny Mile operated in Toronto, but it was brought to a halt in February 2022 after the city council essentially banned sidewalk robots. So, the company pivoted. After raising $10 million in a seed round in February 2022, it entered the U.S. market two months later. As of January 2023, its robots were available for on-demand deliveries in Miami and Charlotte, North Carolina.

In Miami’s Downtown/Brickell area, the company is introducing its services for personal errands. Through the Tiny Mile app, users can request Geoffrey to make deliveries of things like documents or food, tracking its progress through the city. Tiny Mile provides the service for free and earns revenue from companies that advertise on the bots. “We look at it as a free public utility.... We hope to keep the cost at zero for the public by partnering with a community-invested business for full-fleet sponsorship,” explains McGonigle. “So, analogous to a bike program that is corporately sponsored, we’ll brand the robots with the sponsor’s logo, but protect users from any cost.”

Miami is no stranger to the robotics industry. UberEats launched a robot delivery service in the Dadeland area in December 2022. A separate pilot program, funded with $5.25 million from the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, tested Kiwibot delivery robots. And a fleet of driverless vehicles, from Pittsburgh-based Argo AI, was launched last summer in Miami for pilot delivery and ride-share programs.

“Miami is so much fun for us – the vibrancy of the community and all this activity – but that’s also what makes it challenging,” says McGonigle. “Because when you’re building robots, you’re trying to program predictability, but Miami is anything but predictable.”

The latest addition to Miami’s neighborhoods has been entertaining to watch. Passersby approach Geoffrey with curiosity, dogs investigate, and Good Samaritans help the pink bots back up if they fall over coming off a sidewalk. “I think we’ll succeed as a robot company when the robots become part of the fabric of the community,” McGonigle says. “When it just becomes like, ‘Oh, there’s just a pink robot in Miami. It’s just another day.’ That’s when we’ve found success.”l