MIT develops a way for autonomous delivery robots to find your front door – TechCrunch

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method of navigation for robots that could be very useful for the range of companies working on autonomous last-mile delivery. In short, the team has worked out how a robot can figure out the location of a front door, without being provided a specific map in advance. Most last-mile autonomous delivery robots today, including the "wheeled cooler"-style variety that was pioneered by Starship and has since been adopted by a number of other companies, including Postmates, basically meet customers at the curb. Mapping isn't the only barrier to having future delivery bots go all the way to the door, just like the humans who make those deliveries today. MIT News points out that mapping an entire neighborhood with the level of specificity required to do true front-door delivery would be incredibly difficult -- particularly at national (let alone global) scale.