Coco Robotics, a Los Angeles-based startup known for its last-mile delivery robots, has launched a physical AI research lab led by UCLA professor Bolei Zhou, who also joins as Chief AI Scientist. The company said the lab will harness five years of operational data to enhance automation and reduce delivery costs.
CEO Zach Rash said Coco has collected millions of miles of data from dense urban environments, providing a strong foundation for developing more reliable and self-sufficient delivery systems. The new lab, he added, marks a major step toward cutting human teleoperation and achieving full autonomy.
Rash described Zhou’s appointment as a “no-brainer,” citing his global reputation in robot navigation, computer vision, and reinforcement learning. Zhou has begun recruiting top researchers to accelerate Coco’s progress in physical AI, building on an existing collaboration between the company and UCLA.
The research lab will operate separately from Coco’s partnership with OpenAI, which uses robot data to train AI models. Rash said the findings will be used internally to improve automation and shared with cities to address infrastructure challenges, emphasizing that the ultimate goal is to deliver “a higher-quality, lower-cost service” for customers and businesses.