Amazon Scout

Amazon unveiled Scout in January 2019, a knee-high six-wheeled robot built partly on its 2017 acquisition of the startup Dispatch, and set it rolling down sidewalks in Washington, California, Georgia, and Tennessee to deliver packages. Every robot was shadowed by a human Scout Ambassador, which undercut the entire premise of autonomous delivery. In October 2022 Amazon ended the field tests and disbanded the roughly 400-person team, saying the program was not meeting customers' needs. The company framed it as a reorientation rather than a cancellation, but the robots never returned to the sidewalks. Four years on, the customer-facing product is a memory.

Founded

2019-01

Shut down

2022-10-07

Funding raised

Undisclosed

Years alive

4

Founders

Amazon