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.
Every time is see one of these fuckers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5o1c1MJb_Oc
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
And shut-in, no-tipping undergrads from coast to coast weep.
Are you expected to tip the fucking robot?
No no, this is a delivery robot.
After you tip it on its back…
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.
Yes.
Once it is tipped on its side, its easier to remove the batteries and motors.
I’d have 100% done this in college.
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.
The world really needs transparency like that - tip your cook, tip the farmer that grew the amazing tomatoes, or stiff 'em all but at least know who they really were. Before placing your order, get a readout of where the fish was caught, and when… identify how close the chocolate’s cocoa was grown to toxic lead contamination sites - before you take it off the shelf.
Yeah I’d love that, that would be the future.
Yes, but like a cow
expected to tip the fucking robot?
I think that’s more commonly like a sheep.
No, that’s the point
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.
I mean waymo never claimed they would not use human operators from time to time, they in fact disclosed that fact. But people skim over things like that and make statements like yours. Just like I’m positive these delivery bots have the same disclosures.
I think that’s why they will miss this type of delivery, as you do not tip?
That would be the most American thing to do.
Based on the thumbnail, I was expecting some kind of vandalism.
I wish… but no just broke college kids trying to eat cheaper
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…
burrito bomber ftw https://www.darwinaerospace.com/burritobomber
When will they set up the catapults to fling deliveries like in Death Stranding?
Clearly, the superior
siegedelivery engine is a trebuchet.
Maybe then they’ll improve bike lanes
These are the kind of things that could run on a lane built over the sidewalk…
Like I can’t build drones to steal from them too.
I think they’ve been running around in Milton Keynes, UK for a few years now.
A company put these on the campus in town, the robotics engineers built a robot to rob the delivery bots.
I figured that a good percentage of the delivery robots would simply “disappear” from the map and be rebirthed as battle bots in some arena with chainsaw accessories.
𝚁𝙾𝙱𝙾𝚃 𝚆𝙰𝚁𝚂
Ah yes, the rob bots, who doesn’t know them 😜
Why would anyone oppose these bots?
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.
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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.
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.
With all due respect, that sounds like it should and could have been solved in a way other than banning a popular service.
Sure, but even if it could, they probably shouldn’t just keep running in to stuff and routing through areas where there are known collisions. If those are problems they can’t seem to solve, then maybe it’s a product that shouldn’t exist.
This sounds like a real application for Doctrow’s “Chuffie” from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom… scan the “how’s my driving?” QR code on the lid of the bot and downvote… company’s bots gets enough downvotes it gets restricted out of the places it’s receiving the downvotes from.
They block sidewalks, they destroy bus stops, they hurt workers
