Delivery & Transport

Buying advice

Separate indoor vehicles from road and air

Price comparisons only make sense inside one operating domain. Autonomous forklifts and tuggers such as the AGILOX ONE, Balyo Reach Truck or Vecna Tugger run on private floors, where ISO 3691-4:2023 sets the safety requirements for driverless industrial trucks and their systems. That standard excludes public roads, so pavement robots, cargo drones and self-driving road vehicles bring permits, insurance and remote supervision costs that indoor fleets never carry. Compare each vehicle only with others that would work in the same place. Our October 2026 pass found that the Parrot Mambo was the lowest-priced listing here at about $100, while the Elroy Air Chaparral topped the page at about $500,000, and ten carried no price at all and were sold by quote.

Count the site work behind each vehicle

A driverless truck's price rarely covers the work of preparing your building for it. Budget for floor repairs, marked aisles, safety zones at doors and crossings, and wireless coverage between racks. Linking vehicles to your warehouse management system, and to a traffic manager if you mix brands, adds engineering days on top. Ask each maker which site changes its safety case assumes, because a cheaper vehicle that needs more infrastructure can end up the dearer project. Ask every maker to quote against the same site drawing so the infrastructure is priced consistently.

Price the delivery, not just the drone

For pavement robots and drones, the machine is often the smaller part of the bill. In the EU, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 sets the rules and procedures for operating unmanned aircraft, so budget for operator registration, pilot competence and any authorisation your flights need. Pavement robots face open legal questions in some countries, and the Association for Advancing Automation reports that the UK has yet to settle a framework for them. It also suggests judging such services on cost per delivery, uptime, human intervention and successful first-time deliveries, which gives a fairer basis than price per unit.

What to look for

• Price per vehicle against the fleet size you actually need
• Charging, batteries and software licences over the robot's life
• Permits for roads, pavements or airspace where you'll run it

Common questions

Can I buy a single delivery robot or forklift?

Yes, where it's listed with a price. For fleets, routes or mixed vehicles, request a quote on The Humanoid Group with your volumes.

Are consumer drones sold here?

Yes. Alongside delivery and cargo platforms, the category includes camera and starter drones from makers such as DJI and Parrot.

Sources and further reading

• ISO 3691-4:2023 Driverless industrial trucks and their systems — International Organization for Standardization.
  Safety requirements for driverless industrial trucks, including AGVs and AMRs, and their systems.
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 on the operation of unmanned aircraft — EUR-Lex, European Union.
  EU rules and procedures for flying drones, from open-category use to authorised operations.
• Britain Is Turning Its Streets Into a Delivery Robot Laboratory — Association for Advancing Automation (A3).
  A3 analysis of UK pavement robot trials, the unsettled legal framework and how to judge results.