REV-1

Refraction AI (founded 2017 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by University of Michigan professors Matthew Johnson-Roberson and Ram Vasudevan; about $4.2 million seed raised in 2021; now led by CEO Luke Schneider with teams in Ann Arbor and Austin, Texas) makes the REV-1, a distinctive three-wheeled delivery vehicle sized between a sidewalk bot and a car. The REV-1 travels up to 15 miles per hour with about a 280-pound payload and is designed for winter and snow and bicycle-courier-style operation, running primarily in the bike lane or road margin while able to use sidewalks where permitted, a regulatory regime between a sidewalk personal delivery device and a road autonomous vehicle. A critical current-state correction: the dispatch flagged a possible wind-down or acquisition, but Refraction is verified still operating through 2024 to 2026, with the Osage Venture Partners exited label being a venture-portfolio markdown rather than a confirmed acquisition or shutdown, and counter-evidence including a new CEO, an Austin office, Chick-fil-A as a marquee client, and an active 2026 company profile, so it is not tagged discontinued. The registry records it at pilot maturity, since it is a roughly 21-person company with a named client and multi-city presence but no independently verified scale figures. It runs a robots-as-a-service model where customers subscribe to dedicated brand-customizable robots. Any lifetime delivery count, fleet size, revenue, or live-market count is unverified, the claim that the REV-1 is discontinued in favor of a REF-1 is a likely misread of source language describing a second generation of the same design, and the precise nature of the Osage exit is unconfirmed.

Yes. REV-1 is independently verified in real-world operation on the DEPLOY registry, confirmed at named deployment sites with primary sources: not a concept, render, or demo-only.

REV-1's recorded specifications on the DEPLOY registry: Runtime: 7 h; Max speed: 15 mph; Weight: 45 kg; Payload: 22.7 kg. See the Specs section for the full sourced set.

REV-1 is made by Refraction AI, based in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, founded in 2019.

1 verified deployment of REV-1 is on the DEPLOY registry, including at Ann Arbor.

REV-1 is in pilot deployments with named customers and is not yet broadly for sale.

On the DEPLOY registry, comparable sidewalk robots to REV-1 include Starship Bot, Serve Gen 3, Avride delivery robot, Starship Delivery Robot.

REV-1 and Starship Bot (Starship Technologies · 41 deployments) are both sidewalk robots on the DEPLOY registry. REV-1 has 1 verified deployment on record. Compare both records for specs, safety, deployments, and verified-vs-claimed autonomy.

On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, safety, adoption, media, and IP signals, REV-1 ranks in roughly the top 84% of sidewalk models tracked by the registry.

REV-1 is at the pilot stage on the DEPLOY maturity ladder (research, prototype, pilot, commercial, production). Pilot stage means at least one named-customer trial deployment is verified.

REV-1 has no incidents on record in the DEPLOY registry. This does not constitute a safety guarantee; it reflects the incidents DEPLOY has tracked and verified to date.