3E8 Robotics introduces Elly delivery robot that can detect and press elevator buttons

California-based startup 3E8 Robotics unveiled what it calls a pioneering delivery robot capable of physically detecting and pressing elevator buttons.

The company, which is backed by Founders Inc. and a network of angel investors, said it is now preparing for early 2026 pilots. 3E8 Robotics said it is positioning its flagship robot, Elly, as an answer to rising labor costs, delivery bottlenecks and rising demand for contactless or autonomous internal logistics.

Elly operates elevators for multi-floor delivery autonomy

3E8 Robotics said its technology represents a breakthrough that enables fully autonomous deliveries inside multi-floor buildings without requiring elevator APIs, retrofits or building infrastructure upgrades. 

“To behave reliably in real buildings, a robot needs to handle dynamic layouts, crowded spaces, reflections, and unpredictable human behavior,” said David Feldt, co-founder & CEO of 3E8 Robotics. “We designed a mechanism that can locate and press any button from elevator panels to keypads, using real-time, on-device AI. Most deployed robots today avoid manipulators because real-world interaction is hard to do reliably. Our goal was to build a solution that anyone can deploy in any building with no technician required. We believe this will become the most widely adopted approach to vertical mobility in indoor robotics.”

Feldt leads system architecture and the multi-floor autonomy stack.

3E8 Robotics said that, until now, most indoor delivery robots have been limited to ground-floor or single-floor deployments, because the vast majority of elevators, particularly in North American residential towers, hotels, hospitals and commercial buildings, offer no external interface for robots. The company said that the infrastructure gap has effectively blocked the wide-scale deployment of autonomous indoor robots. 

3E8 Robotics said it addresses this barrier with an innovative elevator-interaction system that combines a vision-guided detection pipeline with a low-cost, high-precision actuation module capable of locating and pressing buttons across varying elevator layouts, lighting conditions and panel designs. All decision-making runs fully on-device to handle situations where elevators block network signals.

Elly completes early deployments in San Francisco

For operators across North America, where API-enabled elevators are rare and retrofits are costly, 3E8 Robotics said that its plug-and-play vertical mobility has become the missing link preventing large-scale adoption of indoor delivery robots.

“We realized early that the real barrier to indoor delivery robots in North America wasn’t autonomy, it was the buildings themselves,” said Sajeel Purewal, co-founder and COO of 3E8 Robotics. “Conversations with building operators revealed the same issues: no elevator APIs, heavy delivery traffic and regulations that make elevator retrofits impractical. Once we reframed the problem as an infrastructure mismatch rather than a robotics limitation, the opportunity became clear. If we could solve elevator access without requiring building changes, we could unlock an entire market that had been closed to automation.”

3E8 Robotics said it has completed demos across some of San Francisco’s tallest residential buildings and secured pilot agreements with both condominium complexes and hotels. With this technology, 3E8 Robotics said it aims to expand autonomous delivery beyond single-floor constraints.