Autonomous delivery is often presented as a navigation challenge, but a robot that reaches the correct
place has completed only part of the service. A courier may still wait in a lobby, a merchant may miss the
loading window, or a recipient may be unavailable when the robot arrives. Grab’s internal Singapore trial
illustrates a practical alternative: a human courier handles the flexible road journey while an indoor robot
completes the repetitive building segment. The value comes from dividing the mission according to what
people and machines each do efficiently.
Secure endpoints extend that logic further. A locker or transfer station can accept goods from a courier,
ground robot, drone or indoor robot without requiring everyone to meet simultaneously. To work reliably,
the system needs more than a lock: it needs cargo detection, door-state confirmation, identity and
custody records, collection deadlines, tamper monitoring and defined recovery from failed transfers. The
future delivery network may therefore be built around interoperable handoff points as much as around
vehicles.