If you work or study at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va, soon you'll have access to food and drinks delivered in around 15 minutes by an autonomous robot.
As TechCrunch reports, robot maker Starship is partnering with French food services company Sodexo to offer George Mason University an autonomous food delivery service. It will cater to all 40,000 students, faculty, and staff working at the university with an average delivery time of 15 minutes. The time will vary based on where on campus the delivery needs to be made and what food was ordered.
Starship has been delivering food since early 2017 when it partnered with DoorDash and Postmates for US delivery testing. Then in March 2017 the little six-wheel robots started delivering pizza for Domino's across German and Dutch cities.
This latest partnership is ideal for the little robots, not only because they will have a set campus to learn and navigate, but also because each robot can carry up to 20 pounds of food at a time. It allows them to cater to those late-night study binge sessions which usually result in large groups of students ordering several pounds of food to feed their brains.
To begin with, 25 Starship robots will be deployed across the campus. Food and drink deliveries can be made from Blaze Pizza, Dunkin' Donuts, and Starbucks to name the most well-known stores, but others are also taking part. Delivery isn't free, though, with a $1.99 charge being added to your order. That's going to be worth it for the convenience for many students I imagine.
If the delivery service proves popular I'm sure more stores will want to sign up. Another knock-on effect likely to happen is stores staying open for longer, or at the very least staying open longer just for the robots to come and collect orders. Robot delivered pizza at 3am is going to be a thing, isn't it? Let's just hope there's no fires.