Neubie: a delivery robot that drives the sidewalk on cameras, not lidar

A delivery robot with cameras instead of costly lidar

Neubie is an outdoor delivery robot made by Neubility. Lee Sang-min founded the company in 2017 while a student at Yonsei University. On 23 February 2021 Neubie made 31 deliveries in about five hours, from a convenience store to labs on Yonsei’s Songdo campus in Incheon. At the time it carried 60 litres, reached 6 km/h and ran up to six hours on a charge. Instead of pricey lidar, Neubie uses V-SLAM, which finds its position with several cameras. Lee told TechCrunch that “the essence of self-driving is having proprietary over the hardware.”

The law changed, and the robot took to the sidewalk

Neubie won a CES 2023 Innovation Award. In March 2023 Neubility ran about 50 robots and said it would reach 400 by the end of that year. When Korea’s revised Intelligent Robots Act took effect in November 2023, certified outdoor mobile robots gained the same legal standing as pedestrians and could use sidewalks without regional limits. Neubility received the certification on 31 January 2024 at the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement. It requires passing 16 assessment items, including speed control, emergency stops and crosswalk use. That year it planned delivery services from August around Pangyo Station in Seongnam and in Songdo, Incheon. In 2025 Neubility ran 305 robots at 142 sites and logged 78,497 km. In May 2026 it unveiled Neubie Flow for delivery and Neubie Shield+ for patrols.

A foundation for new services

On the day of certification Lee said its significance lay in laying the groundwork for more varied and innovative services. Money Today’s headline on the 2021 campus trial said the robot was as good as a person. In May 2026 two Neubies led the Lotus Lantern Festival parade. This research found no user survey or study.

Two companies, one day, both “first in Korea”

On 31 January 2024, the day Neubility was certified, ROBOTIS received the same certification for its delivery robot Gaemi. Both companies called themselves the first in Korea. What put the two robots on the sidewalk was not a technical announcement but a change in the law and a certificate. Once a single certification allowed sidewalk driving without regional limits, both companies widened where they operate.

Does technology open this robot’s path, or do the rules?

What we haven’t confirmed

• Whether the target of 400 robots by the end of 2023 was met
• Total deliveries to date (only 44,638 services in a year was found)
• Neubie’s current official size and specifications (the official site could not be opened)
• A Wikimedia Commons photo (not found in this research)