Yandex self-driving group will be delivering food through robots in 250 US college campuses by fall. The company has collaborated with GrubHub to make food delivery easier to college students, where the campuses can’t be reached by car.
Yandex has been developing fully autonomous vehicles since 2017, it has partnered with Uber in September 2020 for a fully automated car. Yandex confirmed that the idea of robotic food delivery was being developed in 2018, in December 2020, the company introduced Yandex.Eats in Moscow, Russia. From fall 2021. It will be expanding these capabilities in America too.
Since the pandemic, the demand for food delivery has increased rapidly. As a result, food delivery apps were flooded with orders, and companies were sometimes unable to deliver them on time. Food delivery robots reduce the burden on delivery people and have been assisting companies in streamlining food delivery. In Russia, the Yandex.Eats has over 30,000 merchants across 166 locations post-pandemic alone.
The robot can navigate fully automatically in pavements, pedestrian areas, and crosswalks at a speed of 3-5 miles per hour. Food security is maintained by giving the customer access through their smartphones, the robot sends a notification once it reaches the destination, the customer can tap a button on the GrubHub app to unlock the top of the container and pick their order. The rover can deliver day and night irrespective of the weather conditions.
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The robot can navigate by itself fully automatically in both controlled and uncontrolled pedestrian scenarios, unless it gets into complex situations like someone/something stepping on it or is being stopped, then it will send a notification for assistance.
GrubHub and Yandex together hope to meet the unique dining needs of college students across the country while being cost-efficient, scalable, and quick. They expect to deliver dozens of these rovers by the time colleges reopen in September for fall semesters.
