Minnesota School Using Robots to Deliver Food to Students
Some students in Minnesota are experiencing the cutting edge of food delivery technology, with a new fleet of robots cruising around the campus with fried rice and a latte on board.
Starting last week, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus started a new delivery service that allows anyone to order from select restaurants and have the food delivered by a rolling robot "almost anywhere on the East Bank."
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The robots from Starship Technologies are the first of its kind approved for use in Minneapolis, and the first University-run delivery service on the campus.
Students, faculty, staff, and visitors can place an order through the Starship food app from the Starbucks, Panda Express, or Erbert & Gerbert's located in the Coffman Memorial Union, and have it delivered right to them by the autonomous robots.
Starship says they've been delivering food on college campuses since 2019, and that their robots use AI, sensors, and machine learning to navigate the sidewalks, roads and obstacles to make the deliveries.
Minnesota winters will surely be an interesting test for the robots, I'm not sure if they equipment the bots with snow tires or what, but Starship says that the delivery robots work in rain and snow.
The six wheeled robots are battery powered and using the handful of sensors and 12 onboard cameras can navigate around objects and people going at a maximum speed of 4mph.
Once an order is placed, the customer will be able to track the robot's location, and only they will be able to unlock the robot to get the order inside.
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