As DoorDash continues to experiment with automation, there are still some pretty simple tasks its robots just canât do yet.

The delivery giant has been offering drivers about $5 to pick up restaurant orders and load them into its Dot delivery robots, according to Business Insider.

Dot is DoorDashâs purpose-built autonomous delivery robot. It can use lidar, radar, and cameras to navigate roads and sidewalks at up to 20 miles per hour. But the large stroller-shaped robot still needs a human to load its delivery cargo.

Thatâs apparently where DoorDash drivers come in.

Devena Bybee, a DoorDash worker in Mesa, Arizona, told Business Insider that she received an offer in July through the app to load a robot. She drove about two miles to a restaurant, picked up the order, and placed it inside a Dot waiting in the parking lot. She also had to photograph and document each step of the process. The job took about five minutes and paid roughly $5.

âHad a DOT order today. Had to load her up and send her on her way, quick $5.00 for going .25 miles to get thereâ in Scottsdale, AZ,â another person wrote in June on a Facebook group for DoorDash drivers.

The post included a screenshot of a DoorDash app screen instructing the driver to âFind the Dot Robot.â It said the customerâs name would appear on the robotâs light bar.

DoorDash unveiled Dot back in September 2025 and has since begun using the robots for deliveries in the Phoenix area. But the offers paying drivers to load them appear to be new.

DoorDash did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo. However, a spokesperson told Business Insider, âThis limited pilot is designed to support merchants during busy periods, while creating more earning opportunities for Dashers outside of traditional deliveries.â

The offers appear intended to help busy restaurants that receive a large number of robot delivery orders. But Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Business Insider that some restaurants may also find it cheaper to outsource the task to DoorDash’s independent contract workers.

DoorDash also used its statement to try to calm concerns that these robots will replace its human workers.

âDashers are essential to our platform and will continue completing the majority of deliveries even as our autonomous technology scales,â the spokesperson said.

The news comes after DoorDash announced last week that it had received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to commercially operate its own drone delivery service, DoorDash Air.

Like Dot, DoorDashâs drones are being developed in-house by DoorDash Labs, the companyâs robotics and autonomy team. But DoorDash appears to acknowledge that building the drone may be easier than figuring out all the logistics needed to get orders into them.

âThe aircraft is what everyone sees. The harder problem is the infrastructure and integration on the ground: real-time inventory reconciliation, universal handoff systems for drive-throughs, rooftops, or merchant back doors. That infrastructure layer is what makes drone delivery actually work at scale for merchants,” the company said in a press release.

DoorDash said it will share more details about its drone delivery service later this year.

This also isnât the first time DoorDash drivers have been called on to perform a simple task an autonomous vehicle still canât do.

Alphabetâs robotaxi company Waymo has also called on DoorDash drivers and tow truck operators to close doors passengers left open on its vehicles.