Amazon.com Inc will halt live tests of its automated delivery robot “Amazon Scout,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Thursday, after realising the programme did not fully meet the needs of its customers.
According to Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll, the company is now scaling back or “reorienting” the programme, and it will work with the involved employees to match them to other open roles within the organisation. In 2019, Amazon began testing the fully-electric Scout, which is the size of a small cooler and moves along sidewalks at a walking pace, in Washington state before expanding to Southern California, Georgia, and Tennessee.