Self-driving delivery bots are hitting the streets of Toronto

Perhaps you’ve seen them: two new self-driving delivery bots from Magna International are rolling around the city’s west end as part of a pilot program. They’re not the first to brave Toronto streets. Geoffrey, the tiny pink courier, tried as much in 2021—until the city banned him from sidewalks. And Markham has been host to four cooler-size food delivery bots since May. But Magna’s automata are of a higher, faster, bulkier order. They’ll be tailed by human chaperones armed with kill switches for the trial run, but if all goes well, they’ll be on their own—and the goal is mass market proliferation. Can these robot drivers, however cute, navigate the city’s insane traffic without incident? We wish them godspeed.

Related: A Q&A with Evan Solomon, Canada’s new minister of AI