Amazon Scout Home Delivery Robot Program Scrapped

After several years of testing and development, it seems like the Amazon Scout delivery robot won’t be hitting the streets near you any time soon.

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An Amazon statement was released stating that the program did not meet the needs of the customer and while the project wasn’t being abandoned completely, it was being “Reoriented”

This certainly seems the case as at the time of writing Amazon still has 11 job openings available on the Amazon Scout team. The oldest job as dating back to December 2020, with the newest being posted just 24 days ago.

We last covered news of Amazon Scout back in July 2020 when in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was being utilized as an ‘essential worker’ thanks to its ability for contactless deliveries.

Will Amazon Scout Make Way For Drones?

While the novelty of seeing the cooler-sized Amazon Scout making its way down the road may have been reserved for the select few in the testing jurisdictions of the program, the long-term business impact didn’t make a lot of sense. Every Amazon Scout had to be accompanied by an Amazon Scout ambassador which begs the question…couldn’t they have just delivered the product in the first place?

Now that the pandemic is over, the need for contactless deliveries has also gone, instead being replaced by the old normal of speed and convenience over everything else.

This falls much more into the remit of drone deliveries. While Amazon drone delivery news has been slower than what they were expecting, the impact of the pandemic was sure to play a role. Earlier this year they announced more testing had begun in California.

With Walmart also announcing partnerships and expanded testing with drone deliveries, could this be the step we were all promised about the next evolution of deliveries rather than robot coolers trundling down the sidewalks?