Do you remember when email was blamed for having the blood of the post office on its hands? There’s a bit of story there about connectivity.

Because the same technology that killed letters made household names of Amazon and e-Bay, and the explosion of online shopping saw delivery post roar back to life. The global pandemic has only accelerated the boom in click and deliver. Uber Eats or Menu Log anyone?

But there’s another interesting (and perhaps not as widely known) story underneath how we shop: data became big business. Huge swathes of it were traded to track, predict, re-target and suggest to encourage us to click, buy and deliver.

Online shopping was here to stay, characterised by speed, security and frequency. But there’s a catch. And it’s called the footpath.

When it comes to click and deliver, the footpath feels more fax machine than information super highway.

And that’s just what Briometrix has been trying to solve – and the savings for delivery companies would be enormous.

“The most expensive part of delivery is what happens in the street when drivers stop and get out of the truck. If a robot could get out, trucks could park at the end of the street and a whole pile of wheel robots go out there and deliver. That would be a huge saving,” Scott Clifton, head of engineering explains.

Scott Clifton, Briometrix Head of Technology

Not to mention more frequent deliveries and more sales on top of huge savings.

But business needs certainty and sending out an army of robots on unpredictable footpaths is too far a leap into the unknown.

“That’s why we want to map every footpath in the world for continuity and effort,” says Scott. “It will give business certainty, savings and more sales.”

For all the mapping of roads of roads, footpaths remain the missing link in the delivery stakes.

“The whole sidewalk thing is the missing link in all the mapping,” Scott says. And it’s all about wheels.

“Briometrix is focused on the concept of small rolling and the maps are not designed for the rolling… the emerging market of street robots for delivery systems is emerging and is about to hit tremendously fast.”

“That needs the solution of continuity and effort,” Scott argues.

Scott says that you only need to look at the appearance of delivery robots on US College campuses to see the potential – and urgency – of the mapping project in our cities.

But isn’t this going to cost a fortune to map? Scott explains that wheelchair users – the most demanding footpath users in the world – represent a huge untapped resource for mapping. Enter the Brio Pilot.

“There’s no way a little robot can do the job. It’s going to run into exactly the same problems that we’re trying to map,” he says. “The people in wheelchairs are intimately aware of how to get across streets, how to get up ramps, how to traverse a footpath.”

The costs in savings and time are enormous.

“We will shortcut delivery companies hundreds and hundreds of hours by giving them access to metadata that we will put together that would allow them to figure out what is the lowest energy level for them to be able to deliver in that particular street.”

And that may be the last piece in the footpath puzzle.