Amazon announced on Thursday that it plans to develop new technology for its automated delivery vehicles in Helsinki, Finland.
The Seattle-based technology giant said in a blog post that it is building a new “development center” to support Amazon Scout. This all-electric automated delivery robot is being tested at four locations in the United States.
The company said that initially, there would be 22 engineers working at the Amazon Scout development center in Helsinki. Amazon also added that they would focus on research and development.
One of their main goals is to develop 3D software that simulates the complexity of real-life
The goal of Amazon with 3D software also is to ensure that Scout can be safely navigated when delivered.
According to LinkedIn, Amazon reportedly acquired the local 3D modeling company Umbra. Umbra has offices in the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. Umbra also opened a new development center in Helsinki six months later.
According to reports, Umbra was founded in 2006 and raised $3.4 million from investors before being acquired.
Umbra enables 3D graphic designers and engineers to create, optimize, share, view their designs in real-time on almost any device
As a game industry standard that has been established for more than a decade in graphics optimization, Umbra is now redefining the industry ecosystem that quickly visualizes the use of complex 3D models for everyone.
It is not uncommon for the company to launch in a new city after a local acquisition. In fact, after acquiring Evi Technologies, an artificial intelligence startup, the company opened an office in Cambridge, England.
British Amazon started with the acquisition of Book pages. Thus, Amazon has been headquartered in Slough, a small town in the U.K., for many years.
Amazon said the Helsinki development center would work with Amazon employees at the Amazon Scout R&D laboratory in Seattle. Also, teams in Tubingen and Cambridge, Germany, where Amazon has been developing delivery drones for many years, will join the project.
Amazon Scout vehicles are about the size of a small cooler and can walk small packages along the sidewalk.
Delivery robots are widely regarded as potentially valuable assets for last-mile delivery. However, they can also replace hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Starship Technologies was also trying to develop these robots since 2014, with Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla.
In January of this year, Starship stated that its robots had completed 1 million deliveries in countries like the U.K., the U.S., Estonia, and Germany.
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