Urban Mobile Robotics: Starship Technologies and Helsinki City Premises Ltd Pilot Wireless Charging for Delivery Robots in Helsinki

The charging pilot at Helsinki’s Hakaniemi Market Square was launched in July 2026 as part of the Urban Mobile Robotics project. Led by the City of Helsinki’s innovation company Forum Virium Helsinki and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, the project pilots a wireless charging station solution developed by Starship Technologies for its delivery robots.

The delivery robots move independently to the charging stations, recharge their batteries without human assistance, and return to their delivery tasks. Each delivery completed by a Starship robot consumes roughly the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle, just a fraction of the energy required by a conventional delivery vehicle.

“This pilot examines how cities can make more efficient use of urban space as autonomous solutions become more widespread, and how they can accelerate innovation by offering companies real-world environments to develop and test new solutions,” says Aleksis Pillai, Project Manager at Forum Virium Helsinki.

The main goal of the Urban Mobile Robotics project is to create an urban robotics hub in the capital region. The project brings together companies and city actors to test new robotics solutions in a real urban environment. The project runs until May 31, 2027, and is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Pioneering the Future of Urban Logistics

Eevi Heikkinen, The Head of Public Affairs for the Nordics at Starship, sees the wireless charging network as the next step toward the future of multimodal urban logistics:

“Urban logistics is one of the key issues for the future of cities. With the growth of e-commerce, home deliveries, and services, goods flows are increasing, but street space cannot be expanded endlessly. The solution is a smarter, more efficient logistics model where, for instance, robots handle certain last-mile deliveries. It is great to test these new smart city solutions in Helsinki.”

The CEO of Helsinki City Premises Ltd, Peggy Bauer, comments on the project as part of city center development:

“As new forms of urban transport and commerce evolve, we are interested in how they can be integrated into the city’s infrastructure to unlock new business opportunities for our tenants as well.”

Finland is one of the world’s busiest markets for autonomous delivery. Starship’s robots have already completed over 1.5 million deliveries in Finland and traveled 5 million kilometers with a fleet of 1,000 robots.