Wolt’s Coco delivery robot carried refreshments between the stage and backstage at Budapest’s Forbes Checkout Day conference on November 10. It was the autonomous courier’s first demonstration in Hungary, not the launch of a Hungarian delivery service.
Attendees could watch Coco at work during the event, according to G7’s report. Wolt later clarified that the appearance was primarily for show. A Hungarian rollout isn’t currently on the agenda, and the company has announced neither concrete plans nor a timetable for local robot deliveries.
In Finland, Coco already handles commercial deliveries. Wolt says the robot operates in several international markets, including Finland. The company and US-based Coco Robotics have worked together since August 2024, starting tests in Helsinki that year before launching commercial service in March 2025. CocoDelivery also details the partners’ Finnish service in its Turku announcement.
Wolt isn’t the only company using delivery robots in Finland. S Group and Starship Technologies jointly operate more than 650 robots across 79 Finnish municipalities. Their work differs from Wolt’s: S Group’s robots mainly carry grocery orders, while Wolt uses smaller fleets primarily to deliver hot meals in city centers. Robots now take part in one fifth of S Group’s home deliveries in Finland.
Automating the journey doesn’t remove people from the process. The robots typically wait outside shops, where employees bring out prepared orders and send them on their way. Staff still play an important role in preparing orders and supervising deliveries.
Street travel brings its own rules and challenges. Autonomous food-delivery robots are becoming a more familiar sight in some European cities, but their journeys aren’t always trouble-free. Finland puts them in a separate legal category: light automated freight devices, rather than pedestrians, cyclists or conventional motor vehicles.
They need special permits to operate and generally must follow pedestrian rules. They can use sidewalks and shared pedestrian-and-cycle paths, with a maximum speed of 15 km/h. When crossing a road, they generally have to use pedestrian crossings.
Operators must also provide continuous remote supervision so a human operator can intervene and take control when necessary. That backup remains essential because robots sometimes get stuck, lose their way or encounter traffic situations they can’t properly handle on their own.
An incident in Tallinn in late October illustrates the risk. A delivery robot went through a red light, forcing a city bus driver to brake suddenly. Nine passengers were injured.
The operator acknowledged fault and attributed the accident to a combination of darkness, distracting light from a billboard and a malfunction in the robot’s light sensor. It disputed the suggestion that the robot had abandoned those involved, saying the device remained at the scene for about ten minutes before moving on.
