Technology@lemmy.worldbyTony Bark@pawb.social
16 hours

Company Pulls Delivery Robots From All College Campuses

futurism.com English

College campuses across the country will no longer be swarming with tiny rolling robots.

Starship Technologies, a leading delivery bot company, announced earlier this month that it was ending its university operations and redeploying over a thousand of its meal machines. But the news is just starting to sink in, as various partnered universities all issue official communications mourning the program’s end like obituaries for a celebrity’s passing.

The time has come for the takeout drones to hit the big leagues, as the company intends to focus on doing deliveries for grocery chains and restaurants in cities instead. And shut-in, no-tipping undergrads from coast to coast weep.

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    Starship Technologies says it's pulling out all over its over 1,200 delivery robots from college campuses and redploying them to cities.
    • credo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1 hour

      Not the same story, but I followed a related story about another bot crashing a SWAT scene:

      Dot is a bit different than most food delivery bots. It’s taller and roomier, and zooms around at a zippy 20 miles per hour, the company claims. That’s because it’s built to travel on roadways and bike lanes, leaving its fellow sidewalk crawlers in the dust.

      WTF

    • Null User Object@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11 hours

      And shut-in, no-tipping undergrads from coast to coast weep.

      Are you expected to tip the fucking robot?

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10 minutes

        No, the article is saying that it is why these robots were popular. Because unlike a human delivery person, there was no tip expected for the robots.

      • CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 hours

        Yes.

        Once it is tipped on its side, its easier to remove the batteries and motors.

      • AlteredEgo@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4 hours

        Would be nice if you could tip the actual cook. Like the food preparation chain is visible on the receipt with boxes for sending a small tip. But only after the meal turned out to be amazing.

        But overall it’s cool that delivery robots will probably mean an end to tipping culture.

      • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zipEnglish
        5 hours

        Right?! That’d be insane to tip it. Like do people tip autonomous vehicles when they use them? I guess if there is really a human operator, like what Waymo did with having human drivers take over from time to time, all while claiming to be autonomous. I guess in that case, tipping might make sense, so long at the tip went to the driver of the vehicle. I don’t know if driver control these small robots ever or not.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
        9 hours

        I think that’s why they will miss this type of delivery, as you do not tip?

    • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
      9 hours

      Based on the thumbnail, I was expecting some kind of vandalism.

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      13 hours

      Not sure how they expect to roll these out by the thousands without completely clogging up sidewalks and bike lanes…

      Zipline is where it’s at…

    • nocturne@slrpnk.netEnglish
      15 hours

      A company put these on the campus in town, the robotics engineers built a robot to rob the delivery bots.

      • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4 hours

        They’re an embodiment of the tragedy of the commons. Businesses glut up the public spaces beyond their intended capacity and for unintended uses, then do or pay nothing for the degradation they cause.

        • Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          Except the tragedy of the commons was a lie made up by Landlords to justify the enclosure of the commons so that people would be forced to work for them under capitalism, and this is the capitalists ruining the commons.

      • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7 hours

        I had a booth at a craft show on a college campus a few months back. The little bastards kept trying to route through the show and were constantly bumping in to tables. They even knocked over a couple of tables at a few vendor stalls, damaging some of the items.