Ottonomy and Presto announced today that the two are partnering up to provide restaurants with autonomous robot-powered curbside and parking lot pickup options.

Presto offers a number of AI and hardware products like point of sale kiosks and tablets to help restaurants manage ordering and workflow. With today’s announcements, Presto is integrating Ottonomy’s technology so that after a guest orders, food can be brought out to their car or curbside via delivery robot.

The two companies are pitching the new service to help alleviate the ongoing labor shortage restaurants are experiencing. By using a robot to shuttle food out to people in cars, humans can be freed up to perform other higher-skilled tasks and customer service.

We’re seeing more and more automation pop up in restaurants to handle food carrying. Both Chili’s and Denny’s have been using Bear Robotics’ Servi bot to bring food out to tables. But Ottonomy and Presto are taking things a step further.

Ottonomy’s robot is a little different from other players in the space in that it does both indoor and outdoor deliveries. The Ottonomy robot uses a combination of 3D lidar and multiple camera mapping and relies less on GPS to allow it to navigate easily between indoor and outdoor spaces, making it ideal to travel from a restaurant kitchen out to a curb or parking space. Additionally, Ottonomy’s robot has two cargo compartments, so it can double up order deliveries.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Ottonomy’s robot used for curbside pickup. Back in September, the company told OttOmate it was conducting a number of curbside pickup pilots with grocers and other retailers.

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