Robot Delivery Technician

The Cloud-Native Workflow Behind Coco's Next-Gen Delivery Robot. READ TIME: Quick Summary * Coco Robotics is developing the Coco 2, an urban delivery robot designed for reliable operation across varied weather conditions, terrain types, and city environments. * The team uses PTC's Onshape and Arena to maintain a single source of truth across design, manufacturing, and the supply chain. * Cloud-native CAD and PLM have improved BOM management, release processes, vendor communication, and overall iteration speed. Building a delivery robot is one thing. Building one that survives Chicago winters, navigates rain-slicked Los Angeles streets, climbs steep gradients, and keeps running reliably, consistently, and at scale is something else entirely. That's the challenge Los Angeles-based Coco Robotics is solving with its next-generation delivery robot, the Coco 2. At the core of the effort is a product development process powered by one truth: To build a reliable product, teams need reliable design tools. A Delivery Robot built to handle anything. The Coco 2 is Coco's latest urban delivery robot, designed to operate in the kind of environments that would stop most robots cold. It's larger in cargo capacity than its predecessor, built from tougher materials for better field performance, and faster. Swappable terrain-specific tires handle wet streets and snow. Powerful motors climb steep gradients. A zero-turn-radius capability lets it navigate tight sidewalks and crowded urban corridors. For rain, an air blade system uses directed airflow to clear water droplets from the robot's sensors so it can see clearly in any weather. On board is a solid-state LiDAR system for reliable object detection, improved cameras, better communications hardware, and an ambient light ring that signals the robot's status and intent to people around it. Quick-swappable batteries make energy replenishment fast and simple in the field. The Coco 2 is designed for a roughly two-mile delivery range and currently operates in cities including Los Angeles and Chicago with plans for rapid global expansion. How Coco balances speed, cost, and quality. For Abhi Bhakuni, lead mechanical engineer at Coco, the core engineering challenge is straightforward to describe and difficult to solve: Build a product reliable enough to operate most of the time, across thousands of units, in dozens of environments, all while keeping cost and manufacturability in check. "Reliability is really important," he said during a webinar panel. "We want these robots to be operating most of the time." That means every design decision carries weight. Material choices, geometry, and structural design all get evaluated not just for performance but for how it holds up in the field and how practical it is to produce at scale. Iteration is essential to get that balance right. But iteration only works if the process behind it is tight. Mistakes that reach manufacturing cost time, real money, and create downstream problems that ripple through the program. The faster a team moves, the more important it is that their data, their files, and their processes stay in sync. Onshape-Arena Connection: one source of truth, across teams. Coco has been using Onshape for nearly 3 years, with Abhi personally on the platform for close to a decade. The company's product development process runs through the tightly integrated Onshape-Arena Connection that keeps design data, BOM, and sourcing details aligned across the entire organization. The workflow is straightforward in concept and significant in practice. Modeling happens in Onshape. When a design reaches a release milestone, the Onshape-Arena integration captures that data in a single shared system. From that point, everyone, including designers, supply chain teams, external vendors, is referencing the same version of a model. There is no ambiguity about which version a manufacturer is working from. "The big difference with the Onshape and Arena integrate workflow is it's like everything is aligned and files stay current," Abhi said. "The release process is cleaner, more visible and... it's really improved communication with vendors. In Arena, we can have our sourcing details very clearly laid down so our supply chain teams can just reference those. There is no confusion." For a team scaling globally, there's no room for a vendor working from the wrong file. The team at Coco streamlined design workflows with Onshape and Arena. 4 things that work better with Onshape and Arena. The shift from a legacy file-based workflow to Onshape and Arena has changed how Coco's team works in four specific ways. * BOM management is cleaner and more current. Design data flows directly from Onshape into Arena without manual export, keeping the bill of materials aligned with the live design at every stage * The release process is more visible. Every release is captured in Arena with a clear record of what was approved, when, and by who. There's no chasing files or reconstructing decisions after the fact. * Vendor communication is more reliable. Sourcing details live in Arena alongside the design data, accessible to supply chain teams and external partners without requiring a separate handoff. Abhi notes this has meaningfully reduced confusion with overseas vendors who still work primarily from formal documentation. * The overall system stays current. Unlike file-based PDM environments, where assemblies break and syncing is manual, cloud-native design means the data is always up to date. "In the past, I would have to be careful about managing data and communicating that carefully," Abhi said. "Now I just share a link." A platform that keeps getting better. One of the less obvious advantages of building on Onshape is that the platform itself evolves on a consistent cadence - releasing updates every three weeks. For a team like Coco's, iterating on a product that operates in the field every day, that matters. New features, improved workflows, and capabilities shaped by real customer feedback arrive regularly, without requiring upgrades, migrations, or IT intervention. For Abhi, that consistency is part of what makes Onshape a reliable foundation for a fast-moving product development team. "The platform is constantly evolving," he said. "New features are coming in at a consistent cadence and it genuinely feels like it's shaped based on user feedback and real customer needs." Building a reliable product is hard enough. The last thing a team scaling globally needs is to outgrow their tools. The Onshape discovery program. Learn how qualified CAD professionals can get Onshape Professional for up to 6 months - at no cost! * * Case Study * Robotics How Fauna Robotics Is Leading Humanoid Robot Development with Cloud-Native CAD & PDM 03.30.2026 See how Onshape cloud-native CAD+PDM accelerated Fauna Robotics' humanoid robotics design development with real-time collaboration and open API tools. learn more * * Blog * Evaluating Onshape * Electronics * Integrations * PCB Studio How Onshape PCB Studio Pulls 3D Component Models Straight from Altium 365 05.21.2026 Learn how the Onshape Altium Connector, a cloud-to-cloud integration, brings supplier-sourced 3D components into your mechanical assembly automatically. learn more Michael LaFleche * * Blog * Evaluating Onshape * Collaboration * Data Management What's the Difference Between File-Based and Cloud CAD? 05.20.2026 Not all CAD is the same. Compare file-based, cloud-hybrid, and cloud-native CAD across collaboration, file management, performance, accessibility, design history, security, and cost. learn more The Onshape Team * * Blog * Customers & Case Studies * Arena PLM Connection The Cloud-Native Workflow Behind Coco's Next-Gen Delivery Robot 05.14.2026 How the Coco Robotics team uses PTC's Onshape and Arena to manage design data, streamline releases, and scale globally without sacrificing quality. learn more The Onshape Team

Autonomous delivery reaches age of expansion. Scaling - that's the state of the autonomous delivery industry, no longer a futuristic vision for food ordering but one already soaring through the skies and navigating busy city sidewalks. That's the diagnosis CEOs Zach Rash of Coco Robotics and Keller Rinaudo Cliffton of Zipline made during the "Future of Delivery" address May 5 at the 2026 Food On Demand Conference in Dallas, where they discussed their companies' growth and sat down with FOD managing editor Bernadette Heier. During the "Future of Delivery" address at the 2026 Food On Demand Conference in Dallas, Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton said the company plans to expand service to Austin, Texas, and Phoenix by the end of the quarter, and another six major metro areas by the end of the year. The CEOs said autonomous delivery addresses the largest headaches on food delivery faced by both consumers and restaurants. After years of building technology and infrastructure capable of carrying out their AI-powered ambitions, the company leaders said their companies are ready and positioned to transform delivery and commerce as a whole. "There are about 5.5 billion instant deliveries happening in the U.S. every year via a 4,000-pound gas combustion vehicle driven by a human," Rinaudo Cliffton said during the address. "If you were to look at the buying behavior that we're observing in customers right now in Dallas, and expand that to the rest of the U.S., there would be 55 billion instant deliveries happening in the U.S." Rinaudo Cliffton reported a massive wave of consumer adoption of Zipline in the Dallas area, where the company spent much of 2025 scaling operations to serve 22 municipalities. Last month, the drone delivery platform launched operations in Houston, with Austin and Phoenix expected to join the list of service areas by the end of the quarter, and another six major metro areas to follow by the end of the year. Rash described Coco's key target service areas as dense cities, where food delivery congests streets already congested with traffic and strained for parking. The robotics company already serves seven cities with diverse climates, including Miami and Chicago, but expansion is set to reach dozens of cities between this year and next. "We've done over a million miles of deliveries in city environments around the world," Rash said, noting the brand has a quickly growing fleet of robots already numbering well into four figures. "Food On Demand work with almost 5,000 merchants at this point, that's across grocery chains, mom and pop restaurants and some of the largest enterprise brands in the world. While Zipline and Coco take different paths to deliver orders autonomously, both see severe weather as an opportunity rather than a roadblock to servicing consumers. "Everyone wants to get things delivered when it's miserable to walk outside, even if the place you're ordering from is actually quite close to you; it's a cold and miserable experience," Rash said. "There's this supply and demand mismatch that happens on the major delivery app today, and Coco aims to be the best partner for those sorts of conditions, which means we can get really good at solving a lot of hard engineering problems to deliver on a great experience." Coco Robotics CEO Zach Rash (right) looks at a delivery robot vision for the future of autonomous delivery with Food on Demand managing editor Bernadette Heier at the FOD Conference May 5 in Dallas. For Coco, navigating those conditions means robots capable of trudging through flooded areas and dense snow. For Zipline, weather resistance means drones that can fly through hail and heavy rain. "The challenge of building autonomous vehicles that operate reliably in the real world is that a lot of weird, extreme stuff happens in the real world," Rinaudo Cliffton said. Food On Demand actually ended up flying in hurricane-level winds a month ago." "This system is designed to handle all of this and ultimately operate 24/7/365, in a way that people can count on, day in and day out," he added. Beyond a willingness and capacity to deliver when human couriers prefer not to, both companies see a simple onboarding process with operators as crucial to expansion. "When you enroll to start having your deliveries fulfilled with Coco, the robot arrives, your staff just comes outside, lifts the lid, puts the order in, and it goes on its way," Rash said, noting an intentionally simple setup process with no costs for the operator. Rinaudo Cliffton said Zipline followed a similar emphasis on simplicity, noting that the approach makes integration a more obvious decision for operators. "None of the restaurant brands we work with want to do any kind of construction project or really want anything to do with drones, the FAA, or anything complex with technology," he said. "All they want is teleportation. They want a magical portal in the wall (where) you make food, pass it through the magical portal and it's immediately teleported directly in that moment." That magical portal Zipline uses is an in-house-designed product called "drop boxes," an order drop-off space that can be installed outside restaurants without requiring power or permitting. "We can deploy these drop boxes in just a few hours," Rinaudo Cliffton said... "Most of the new drop boxes that we're doing, especially with the Chipotle and a lot of other brands, we're now doing through-wall loading. So we actually attach the drop box directly to the wall, and then they can load the drop box without leaving the restaurant." Both CEOs said autonomous delivery methods have quickly gained traction among diverse demographics, with Rash recalling parents who insist on using Coco for delivery orders, and Rinaudo Cliffton mentioning the popularity of Zipline with nursing homes. As companies expand, the solutions they offer will become more evident and increasingly available. The coming year, the CEOs predicted, will be one of skyrocketing adoption for autonomous delivery. The 2026 Food on Demand Conference runs through Wednesday, May 7, at the Renaissance Addison Dallas Hotel. Keep up with Food On Demand! Demographic Information

Coco Robotics has appointed Ralf Wenzel to its board of directors as the company scales its autonomous delivery fleet globally. Wenzel brings two decades of experience in last-mile logistics, having founded Foodpanda and JOKR, and helped lead Delivery Hero through its 2017 IPO. He has built delivery operations across more than 40 countries and previously served as managing partner at SoftBank Group International. The appointment supports Coco's strategy of building an operationally experienced board as it expands into new cities and geographies. The company, founded in 2020, operates the world's largest urban robot delivery platform and has completed over 500,000 zero-emission deliveries across the US and Europe. Coco currently operates in major cities including Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Helsinki, partnering with platforms such as Uber Eats, DoorDash and Wolt.