Nobody clicked pay.

A delivery car drives through the city. When it arrives, money moves. RoboPay is the payment layer for machines and AI agents in the physical world.

See how a delivery pays Watch the demo

A research group at HTW Berlin, building toward a startup. Code on GitHub.

Paid only when the car proves delivery.

  1. The buyer locks 0.2 SOL

    The money goes into an escrow on Solana. Nobody can touch it yet. create_delivery()

  2. The car drives

    Our PiCar-X leaves with the parcel. The payment waits while it moves.

  3. It scans the box

    The car’s camera reads the QR code on the box. No code, no payout.

  4. The confirmation is signed

    The car signs the delivery on-chain. Anyone can check it in the Solana Explorer. confirm_delivery()

  5. The owner gets paid

    The escrow releases the 0.2 SOL to the car’s owner, found through its peaq Machine-NFT. close_escrow()

Locked In motion Delivered
Buyer wallet Escrow on Solana 0.2 SOL Owner wallet Sender Box with QR code

Machines cannot pay for themselves.

  • No bank account

    A robot cannot open one. It has no passport, no address and no signature.

  • Cards fit people, not robots

    Cards need a person to hold them, approve them and dispute them.

  • Payment is not proof

    Money moving says nothing about whether the parcel arrived.

Money and the real world do not talk to each other. RoboPay makes them.

Two layers of proof.

One code is not enough. So the payout depends on two checks, and the second one closes the gap the first one leaves open.

Planned, next step

Letterbox co-signature

Proves
The car signs the letterbox’s one-time code. A weight sensor confirms the parcel, and the letterbox co-signs.
Can’t stop
A code relayed from far away.
Working on the car today

QR handover

Proves
The car read the code on the box.
Can’t stop
A copied code. Today it never changes.

Connected. Identified. Paid.

Staex logo

Connectivity

Staex keeps the robot securely connected.

peaq logo

Identity

peaq gives every car a verifiable identity, its Machine-NFT. That is how RoboPay finds the owner to pay.

Solana

Payments

An escrow program with three calls: create_delivery, confirm_delivery, close_escrow.

Backed by research.

Our HTW Berlin paper asks one question: can a moving machine settle a payment on-chain the moment it arrives?

Indoor proof of concept: Raspberry Pi 4 with 4G module and GPS next to a phone showing the Drone Delivery app
Indoor proof of concept. A Raspberry Pi with a 4G SIM signs the payout.
Redesigned hardware: Raspberry Pi 4 with SIM7600 4G and GPS HAT, external GPS antenna and 4G antenna
The redesign. GPS now comes from the 4G module.
8 s

From delivery trigger to a confirmed Solana transaction. One indoor run, target 15 s.

30+

Outdoor GPS test runs planned to prove it.

3

Nodes in the next design: one fixed drop point and two mobile carriers.

165M

Agent payments on the x402 protocol by April 2026. Machine payments are arriving.

The gap. No prior work combines a moving device with an on-chain payment that arrival triggers. The demo car proves delivery with a QR code. The research track tests GPS arrival.

  1. Indoor proof of concept
  2. Hardware redesign
  3. Outdoor GPS tests

Working draft, September 2026. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Alexandra Mikityuk.

Watch a car get paid.

The RoboPay PiCar-X prototype with its circuit boards
PiCar-X prototype
Letterbox prototype with servo lid, wiring and a weight sensor
Letterbox prototype
Vision: a delivery car hands a milk carton into a smart letterbox
Where this goes

Prefer YouTube? Open the full demo there.

Machine-payment markets are growing.

M2M / IoT payments

2026 → 2034
$11.3B→ $55B

Agentic AI commerce

2026 → 2030
$8B→ $1.5T

DePIN

today → forecast
~$30B→ $3.5T

Forecasts differ 2–5× between sources. Sources: StartUs Insights, Nevermined, bex.co (2026); RoboPay project paper §15. Bar lengths are illustrative, not to scale.

Would you accept a delivery robot?

0%

want an instant notification

0%

would pay a premium

0%

say yes to a delivery robot

0%

find blockchain as safe as their bank

38 responses · first round · mostly aged 18–24. The last number is the one we have to earn.

Any machine that delivers can pay.

One payment stack, every robot. Cars today. Drones, boats and humanoids next.

A research group becoming a startup.

RoboPay grows out of the Machine Economy Lab at HTW Berlin. We build the prototype, publish the research and are working toward a company. Built for the Colosseum Crypto World’s Fair.

Portrait of Kevin Ehrentraut

Kevin Ehrentraut

Founder and Technical Lead

Car programming, Solana escrow, peaq integration.

Staex, HTW Berlin

Portrait of Xinyan Liu

Xinyan Liu

Hardware and Mechatronics

Smart mailbox (Unit A).

Tongji University, HTW Berlin

Portrait of Yashdeep Singh

Yashdeep Singh

Business and Market Research

Car hardware assembly, market research, survey.

HTW Berlin

yashdeepsingh.com

Portrait of Prof. Dr. Alexandra Mikityuk

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Mikityuk

Supervisor

HTW Berlin. CEO of Staex GmbH.

HTW Berlin, Staex

Questions about RoboPay.

What is RoboPay?

RoboPay is the payment layer for machines and AI agents in the physical world. A machine gets paid automatically when it proves it did the job, for example when a delivery car arrives.

How does a delivery robot get paid?

The buyer locks 0.2 SOL in an escrow on Solana. The car drives to the box and scans its QR code. It then signs the delivery on-chain, and the escrow releases the money to the car’s owner.

Why can’t robots use banks or cards?

A robot has no bank account, cards are made for people, and a payment alone is not proof that the parcel arrived. RoboPay ties the payment to proof of delivery.

How does RoboPay prove a delivery?

Two layers. The QR handover works on the car today. A letterbox co-signature with a weight sensor is the planned next step and closes the gap of relayed codes. Our research also tests GPS arrival detection as a trigger.

Which technology does RoboPay use?

Solana for escrow payments, peaq for the car’s verifiable Machine-NFT identity, and Staex for secure connectivity.

Is RoboPay live?

It runs on real hardware as a working prototype: a PiCar-X delivery car and a letterbox prototype. Payouts that follow the Machine-NFT owner are built and in testing.

Who builds RoboPay?

A student research group, the Machine Economy Lab at HTW Berlin: Kevin Ehrentraut, Xinyan Liu and Yashdeep Singh, supervised by Prof. Dr. Alexandra Mikityuk. We are working toward a startup.

Machines will pay machines.

  1. Payouts follow the Machine-NFT ownerBuilt, in testing
  2. Letterbox co-signature with weight sensorNext
  3. On-chain fee split and security hardeningNext
  4. From research group to companyGoal
Codegithub.com/kevkaseeker-source/robopay Demoyoutube.com/watch?v=P73MK2Du2Nw Telegram@KevkaAkvek X@R0boPay
Watch the demo How it works