On a misty Saturday afternoon in Shenzhen’s Central Park, a gaggle of teenage girls are sheltering from the drizzle under a concrete canopy. With their bags of crisps piled high in front of them, they crowd around a couple of smartphones to sing along to Mandopop ballads. The sound of their laughter rings out across the surrounding lawn – until it is pierced by a mechanical buzzing sound. Someone has ordered dinner.

A few metres away from the impromptu karaoke session is an “airdrop cabinet”, one of more than 40 in Shenzhen that is operated by Meituan, China’s biggest food delivery platform. Hungry park-goers can order anything from rice noodles to Subway sandwiches to bubble tea.

A drone, loaded up with goods from a shopping mall less than three kilometres away, flies into view, and earshot, hovering over the delivery station for a moment, before steadily lowering and depositing the goods into a sealed box that can only be unlocked by entering the customer’s phone number. Dinner is served with not a human in sight. Meituan aims to beat human delivery times by about 10%, although perhaps because of its journey whizzing through the clouds in a thin polystyrene box, the food, char siu pork and a waffle, is slightly cold.

The drones are a small part of the broader robotics and artificial intellig...
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