Robots? Some Companies Find Only Humans Can Do the Job

Among the disenchanted, FedEx Corp. said last month it was powering down Roxo, its last-mile delivery robot, to prioritize several "nearer-term opportunities," a spokeswoman said. Inc. said it was ending field tests of Scout, its home-delivery robot, after learning that some aspects of its "unique delivery experience" weren't "meeting customers' needs," a company spokeswoman said. And over the summer, DoorDash Inc. said it was shutting down its Chowbotics business--best known for Sally, the salad-making robot--roughly 18 months after buying it. "While we gained valuable insights into how to better serve this market, we concluded our current approach was not meeting our very high thresholds for continued investment," a DoorDash spokesman said. Companies have entertained hopes that the growing variety of robots could help them not only weather the worker shortage, but speed up labor-intensive tasks, improve customer service by reducing the number of things the human workers have to do, and as an added bonus, position their brands as innovative and forward-leaning.