Expo City Dubai and Yango Group Launch Autonomous Food Delivery
The delivery service will enhance convenience for Expo City's employees, residents, and visitors while advancing Dubai's smart city vision.
Seamlessly blending into smart city environments, the last-mile autonomous robots will be delivering meals from select cafés and restaurants to Expo City's main office in Al Wasl Plaza during a four-month pilot program. The robots independently plan their routes, maneuver around obstacles, and give way to pedestrians, while navigating urban areas with precision using AI. 'We are thrilled to collaborate with Expo City Dubai on this pilot program. Its clearly defined zones provide a perfectly controlled environment to safely and efficiently test autonomous technologies. In line with Expo City's vision as a blueprint for future cities, our robots combine cutting-edge AI technology and sustainable last-mile delivery practices to elevate daily life in smart communities,'
said Nikita Gavrilov, Regional Head, Yango Tech Autonomy.
Using high-definition maps and an array of sensors, delivery robots plan routes in real time and avoid pedestrians, vehicles, and static obstacles, even in low-light conditions or adverse weather. Powered by electricity, the robots produce zero emissions and operate more quietly than traditional delivery vehicles. 'Expo City is a testbed for bold breakthroughs in technology and innovation, with its Urban Lab providing an open city-wide space to pilot and scale solutions needed for future human-centric cities. Urban Lab lowers barriers to innovation, rigorously testing solutions and preparing markets to adopt impactful, sustainable technologies. Testing Yango Group's autonomous delivery robots at Expo City is one of many ways that our Urban Lab is setting the standard for cities of the future,'
said Dr Amy Hochadel, Vice President – Urban Lab, Expo City Dubai.
This initiative expands Yango Tech — Yango Group's B2B ecosystem — and enhances its portfolio of AI-powered enterprise solutions, reinforcing the company's commitment to delivering cutting-edge, tech-driven innovations for businesses worldwide.
Currently, the pilot program is available exclusively for deliveries to the Al Wasl 3 office building. Users can order meals through the Expo City Eats app, which facilitates food delivery services across the city, and Yango Group's robots will deliver from four restaurants to a designated point in the office.
Upon successful completion of the pilot, the service is expected to expand and deliver from more Expo City restaurants to all residents and commercial tenants in a full commercial rollout.
News Source: Sherpa Communications
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
UAE and Saudi Arabia among world's top three AI superpowers, analysis finds
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the top three artificial intelligence superpowers in the world, a report by a US data centre company has found. The US led the rankings, followed by the UAE and then Saudi Arabia. The Gulf states placed ahead of South Korea, France, India, China, the UK, Finland and Germany in the analysis, compiled by TRG Datacenters, a Texas-based company focused on national AI supercomputing power, AI company activity and government AI readiness. "The country [UAE] has over 188,000 AI chips and a total power capacity of 6.4K megawatts," the report said. The TRG analysis also factored in a supercomputer data set from research institute Epoch AI, along with statistics for total power capacity. "The battle for AI supremacy is being fought on multiple fronts and raw computing power is just one piece of a much larger puzzle," a TRG spokesman said. While some countries are pouring resources into building supercomputers and data centres, others are prioritising the creation of regulatory frameworks "that attract international AI research and development", he added. The strong performance of the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the rankings is a sign that AI aspirations in the Gulf are starting to pay dividends. The analysis comes weeks after a report from Counterpoint Research showed Dubai outpacing San Francisco in overall AI adoption. Abu Dhabi ranked eighth in the study. In June, a report from online learning platform Coursera found the UAE leads the Arab world for AI maturity. The UAE has long been working to become a major player in the sector. The country's push has resulted in the establishment of start-ups, partnerships and investments from industry leaders including Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI. In 2019, the UAE announced the establishment of a university dedicated to AI, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Two years earlier, the UAE was among the first countries in the world to appoint an AI minister. In July of this year, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, introduced a new classification system with icons to indicate when AI was used in research and publications. The UAE's AI credentials received another major boost in May during US President Donald Trump's visit to Abu Dhabi, when he witnessed the unveiling of plans for a 5GW UAE-US AI Campus. The campus is considered by many analysts to be among the largest AI infrastructure projects in the world and could help ensure the UAE is a major player in the AI space for years to come.
Gulf Business
4 hours ago
- Gulf Business
How AI Is elevating aviation from operational efficiency to passenger experience
Image: Supplied Aviation is undergoing one of its most profound transformations, one that is not driven by new aircraft or routes, but by algorithms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a back-office tool or emerging experiment. It's fast becoming the engine room of the modern aviation experience, reshaping not only how airlines and airports operate, but how they connect with the people they serve. The commercial pressures facing the sector today are relentless: fuel prices, operational bottlenecks, pilot shortages, passenger expectations, sustainability mandates. And yet, within this pressure cooker, AI has emerged as a strategic release valve. Done right, it's helping aviation leaders build resilience, unlock profitability, and deliver the kind of personalised service travelers increasingly expect. One of the most effective applications we've seen is Lufthansa's flight operations optimisation platform. It digests data from a staggering number of sources , aircraft telemetry, crew availability, airspace restrictions, weather , and offers real-time routing and resource recommendations. Not hypotheticals. Real suggestions that operations managers are acting on 90% of the time. That's a sea change in how decisions are made, with measurable benefits in fuel savings and on-time performance. At ground level, the picture is just as compelling. Biometric boarding gates at Denver International. AI-powered debris detection systems at Then there's the passenger experience. In a market where loyalty is hard won, AI is helping airlines move beyond reactive service to proactive hospitality. American Airlines is using AI to tailor everything from seat upgrade offers to travel recommendations, all based on previous behavior and contextual data. For frequent travellers, that small touch of relevance often makes the difference between a one-time flyer and a lifetime customer. AI's value goes beyond the customer-facing sphere AI's value also extends well beyond the customer-facing sphere. British Airways is using RFID systems to reduce baggage mishandling. TAV Technologies is applying AI and computer vision to minimise aircraft turnaround times. Predictive maintenance tools are flagging equipment issues long before a delay becomes inevitable. And the deeper we embed AI into operations, the more we see its compound effect,not just cost savings, but smarter planning, smoother workflows, and happier passengers. Of course, integration doesn't come easy. Legacy systems are a challenge. So is data governance. Considering in addition to this facial recognition and biometric tracking, there are important conversations to be had around privacy and ethics. But these are solvable issues. What's harder to engineer is the cultural shift: getting aviation leaders to see AI not as a patch or pilot, but as core infrastructure. We now see a clear inflection point. The airlines and As someone who's been in the room with industry decision-makers, I'll say this. Those who embed AI deeply into their operations,across ground, air, and digital touchpoints,are the ones who will define the next decade of aviation. They won't just be more efficient. They'll be more adaptable, more trusted, and more competitive. Because in the skies, as in business, altitude is nothing without foresight. And AI is what's giving this industry its clearest view yet.
Khaleej Times
4 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Nearly 90% of videogame developers use AI agents, Google study shows
A Google Cloud survey showed that 87% of videogame developers are using artificial intelligence agents to streamline and automate tasks, as the industry focuses on optimizing costs following a wave of record layoffs. Most of the respondents in the report, published on Monday, said AI was helping automate cumbersome and repetitive tasks, freeing developers to focus on more creative concerns. Gaming publishers have turned to AI to deal with the industry-wide challenge of ballooning development costs and elongated creation cycles stemming from high fan expectations and intense competition. The study, conducted by Google and The Harris Poll, surveyed 615 game developers in the U.S., South Korea, Norway, Finland, and Sweden in late June and early July. Around 44% of developers use agents to optimiae content and process information such as text, voice, code, audio and video rapidly, enabling them to exercise autonomy and make decisions, the study showed. But the use of AI in videogames is a highly contentious topic, with many within the industry concerned over potential job losses, intellectual property disputes and lower pay. Last year, Hollywood's videogame performers went on strike over AI and pay issues, while studios shut down and more than 10,000 people lost their jobs. The industry is expected to gain momentum this year and the next, with the launch of premium titles and new consoles seen to boost spending. According to the survey, 94% of developers expect AI to reduce overall development costs in the long term. That, even as roughly one in four developers find it challenging to precisely measure the return on investment of their AI implementations, while costs associated with integrating the technology are also high. Around 63% of those surveyed expressed concerns over data ownership as the legality around licensing and who exactly owns AI-generated content remains unclear.
