Starship Robots Roaming Campus

With finals just around the corner, one way to optimize study time is to use the Starship delivery robots. With Starship robots, one can avoid waiting in lines or long commute times. This allows students to do other things whilst waiting for their food to arrive. 

Starship robots usually take less than 45 minutes to arrive all the way from North Dining, however, the wait is typically closer to 20 minutes. Delivery fees vary depending on the time of day, as well as the demand, but they tend to range from $1-$3 around lunchtime. The robots deliver food from most places on campus with a few exceptions (a notable one being Chick-Fil-A). Since the Starship bots traverse campus, it is possible for them to encounter delays while trying to cross the street, however this is not a common occurrence. 

The (originally) Estonian company, Starship, was founded in 2014, and they launched their delivery service commercially in 2017. Since then they have made over seven million deliveries to people globally. Starship’s primary focus is on college campuses, however they do operate at a select few grocery store chains. They now have offices in LA, London, and Estonia. 

On a technical level, each Starship bot is equipped with a full sensor suite, including active radar, ultrasonic imaging, time of flight distance sensor, twelve cameras, and a neural network to tie everything together. All of that enables the bots to make around 150,000 road crossings globally per day. They can reach a top speed of 6 km/h, which is comparable (if not faster) than the average pedestrian. Each bot weighs 25kg, and can have a payload of a little under 10 kg. Lastly, their 18 hour battery life allows them to travel, on average, 40km per day. The bots are speculated to cost about $5,500 each. While they do use neural networks to travel, they still have the ability to be remotely controlled in the event the neural net is unable to handle an unexpected situation. With that said, Starship bots operate with L4 autonomy, so human control is usually not needed due to how developed they are.