AIBRIEF
Dot is DoorDash's sidewalk delivery robot. A new Phoenix pilot has it handle the road; a DoorDash driver, paid about $5, still loads the food.
Mesa, Arizona Dasher Devena Bybee pulled into a restaurant lot in July, slid a takeout bag into a stroller-shaped robot, photographed each step, and drove home. The robot did the rest. Five minutes of work, about $5 in her account.
The bot is Dot, DoorDash's autonomous delivery vehicle, which uses lidar, radar, and cameras to navigate at up to 20 mph. DoorDash unveiled it in September 2025 and has run Phoenix deliveries since. What is new is the offer Bybee saw in her app: not a delivery, but a load.
Business Insider reports DoorDash is paying Dashers roughly $5 to drive to a restaurant, pick up the order, and load it into a Dot in the lot. In June, a Scottsdale Dasher posted in a Facebook driver group: "Had a DOT order today. Had to load her up and send her on her way, quick $5.00 for going .25 miles to get there— in Scottsdale, AZ." The app told the driver to "Find the Dot Robot."
A DoorDash spokesperson called the program a "limited pilot" meant to support merchants during busy periods, and said Dashers "will continue completing the majority of deliveries" as the autonomous fleet scales. Robert Bruno, a labor and employment relations professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Business Insider that some restaurants may find it cheaper to outsource the loading step. In February, Waymo paid DoorDash drivers to shut robotaxi doors, the same residual-step pattern. Gizmodo ties the rollout to DoorDash's recent FAA clearance, a step toward the company's separate drone program.