Physical AI for the last mile
Collective Robotics builds last mile as a service. Robotic parcel hubs, the micro-logistics network that runs between them, and the communities that host both.
The problem
E-commerce scaled in twenty years. The infrastructure underneath it did not. We still deliver parcels much the way we delivered letters, one van and one driver and one door at a time, and every part of that is straining.
of total delivery cost sits in the final mile alone.
of e-commerce transport emissions are generated in that same final leg.
deliveries fail first time, which means a second van, a second round and a second set of emissions.
Industry figures, widely reported across European last-mile logistics.
What we're building
Two halves of one system. Fixed robotic hubs that absorb the volume, and light electric vehicles that carry it the final few hundred metres. Each half is what makes the other work.
Sited where people actually live, and placed with the community that will use them. A carrier arrives once, hands over a full round in a single stop, and drives away. Residents collect on their own schedule, around the clock, from something designed to belong on the street.
From the hub, light zero-emission vehicles cover the last few hundred metres to the door. E-cargo bikes first, increasingly autonomous over time. Because the hub has already consolidated the volume, the round shrinks to a few streets and the economics finally work.
The node makes the edge economical. The edge makes the node useful to a whole neighbourhood. Neither works alone, and that is exactly why nobody has built it yet.
The hub
A working prototype, standing on a Bristol street, clad in timber so that it sits comfortably where people live. Everything behind that facade is designed around one idea: the carrier's time at the kerb should be measured in seconds, not minutes.
The hub
A hub only works if the street around it wants it there. Residents help us shape how it looks, where it goes and how it should behave, and the finished thing gives something back to the place that made room for it.
A courier offloads their whole allocation for a catchment in a single interaction, then leaves. The hub does the rest of the work itself.
Robotic handling means a great many parcels fit into very little space, so a hub can sit where the parcels are actually going.
Parcels are held securely and released to the right person whenever it suits them. No delivery window, no waiting in, no doorstep theft.
Modular cladding, a small footprint and no forecourt requirement, so a hub can be specified to suit a quiet square or a busy high street.
The people who will use a hub help decide how it looks, where it stands and how it should work. A hub a neighbourhood had a hand in is one it looks after.
Free advertising space for local businesses, a noticeboard for the neighbourhood, and surfaces given over to local artists rather than sold to the highest bidder.
The same robotic storage that handles parcels can lend tools, equipment and everyday things to neighbours, so one hub does more than one job.
Hubs share revenue back with the communities that host them. Infrastructure that pays into a place rather than out of it.
In place
The same system, specified for very different places. These are design concepts for how the network lands in a real street. The point is that it lands quietly, and that people are glad it is there.
Technology
CoRo is spinning out of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory on the back of more than a decade of research into how large numbers of machines coordinate with each other in the real world. That research is the company's foundation, licensed in, and now pointed at a problem everyone cares about.
Software that decides what each machine in the network needs to know, and when, so that hubs, vehicles, carriers and residents coordinate organically.
Parcels are not uniform. They arrive in every shape, weight and state. Reliable robotic handling of genuinely unstructured objects is the hard technical problem here, and it is the one we have spent years on.
The network is designed so that autonomy is a dial rather than a cliff. Every increment of capability lowers the cost per drop across an estate that is already generating revenue.
Why it matters
Our mission is to use technology to restore balance, to the world and to the people living in it. In last-mile logistics those two things point the same way. A network that is cheaper to run is also one with far fewer diesel vans idling outside houses where nobody is home.
Consolidating a whole round into one stop removes the failed-delivery journeys entirely, and the remaining few hundred metres are covered by zero-emission vehicles.
Fewer vans circling residential roads means less congestion, less noise and safer streets for the people who live on them.
No waiting in for a window, no trek across town to a depot, no parcel left somewhere you would rather it was not. Collection on your own terms, at the end of your own road.
Hubs share revenue with the places that host them, and give their outside over to local businesses, noticeboards and local artists. Infrastructure a neighbourhood has a stake in.
Team
A founding team out of one of the strongest robotics labs in Europe, with decades of combined experience across real-world robotics, autonomous systems and engineering delivery, and a prototype already standing on a street.
Professor of Swarm Engineering at the University of Bristol and one of the best known voices in real-world robotics. Sabine brings experience leading hugely successful research teams, robotics organisations and raising over £40 million in funding across a range of projects.
Chartered Engineer, with a PhD from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and several accelerator awards within the UK tech startup space. Henry leads the design of the network, hub and connecting software.
Razanne looks after partnerships, deployment and the community side of things, which is the work of getting a hub not just approved onto a street, but genuinely welcomed onto it.
Get in touch
If you are an investor, a carrier, a landowner or an engineer who wants in on rebuilding how a billion parcels reach a billion doors, we would like to hear from you.
Contact us → info@collectiverobotics.ai