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It takes a precinct: bringing autonomous delivery to the Gold Coast

Meet the fleet! Serve Robotics delivery robots Pavlo W, Griffith University’s GR1-FF and GCHKP’s very own Goldie, ready to roll in the Precinct.

When Australia’s first footpath delivery robots began rolling through the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct in October, they became a very visible example of what can happen when the right people, partners and place come together. 

Serve Robotics chose the Gold Coast for its first operation outside the United States, launching a pilot with DoorDash that allows customers to have orders from participating local restaurants delivered by autonomous robots. 

And the robots are already getting to work, with Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers becoming the first local retailer to offer autonomous robot delivery through DoorDash.

The service is initially operating within the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct, where more than 20,000 students, 3,000 residents, researchers, health professionals, businesses and visitors create a unique real-world environment for testing emerging technologies. 

But getting the robots onto our footpaths took much more than technology. 

Invest Gold Coast helped attract Serve Robotics to the city. DoorDash brought its delivery platform, restaurants and customers. Griffith University provided a home for Serve’s Australian operations, while the Precinct provided the connected community in which the technology could move from possibility to everyday use. 

As Serve Robotics CEO and Co-founder Ali Kashani put it: “The City of Gold Coast opened the door, DoorDash brought the restaurants and customers, and Griffith University in the Health and Knowledge Precinct gave our fleet a home.” 

It is a great example of the role innovation precincts can play as real-world testbeds. 

Rather than testing new technology in isolation, the pilot puts autonomous robotics into a living community. The robots navigate the same footpaths as students heading to class, health workers travelling to and from the hospital, residents walking their dogs and people grabbing lunch. 

And the opportunity extends beyond the deliveries themselves. 

Griffith University is the first university to host a Serve operations team, with the robots returning to an operations depot on campus between deliveries. Serve and Griffith are also exploring internship and early-career opportunities for students and graduates in robotics, autonomy operations and field engineering. 

For students, that means technology shaping the future isn’t just something to study. It’s operating outside their classroom. 

For local businesses, the pilot offers another way to reach nearby customers. For researchers and industry, it provides an opportunity to see emerging technology operating in a complex, real-world environment. And for companies like Serve, it provides access to the partners, talent, infrastructure and community needed to test and scale new ideas. 

The pilot will also be shaped by the people using it, with community feedback helping inform any future expansion of the service. 

For the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct, the arrival of Serve Robotics is about much more than having robots deliver lunch. 

It shows what becomes possible when government, industry, research, education and community come together in one place, creating an environment where new ideas can be tested, experienced and put to work.