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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- kreskin@lemmy.worldEnglish40 minutes
Do not, my friends become addicted to throwing delivery drones in the river by school. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absense.
Also applies to: food, jobs, medical care, clean water and air, a place to live, justice, and basic dignity.
- credo@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
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
- fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 hours
Every time is see one of these fuckers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5o1c1MJb_Oc
18 hoursAnd shut-in, no-tipping undergrads from coast to coast weep.
Are you expected to tip the fucking robot?
- CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
Yes.
Once it is tipped on its side, its easier to remove the batteries and motors.
- GamingChairModel@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
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.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish6 hours
expected to tip the fucking robot?
I think that’s more commonly like a sheep.
- AlteredEgo@lemmy.mlEnglish11 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.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish6 hours
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.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish3 hours
That would be my future, if you make me king. Since the offers for absolute unflinching loyalty are a bit thin on the ground for the past couple of decades, I’ll assume it’s probably not the future we’re getting.
- jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish16 hours
I think that’s why they will miss this type of delivery, as you do not tip?
- EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zipEnglish12 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.
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.
- CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
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…
- doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish2 hours
They won’t be in my area. We don’t have sidewalks or bike lanes.
- Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
burrito bomber ftw https://www.darwinaerospace.com/burritobomber
- prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish15 hours
When will they set up the catapults to fling deliveries like in Death Stranding?
- Airowird@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish11 hours
Clearly, the superior
siegedelivery engine is a trebuchet.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish6 hours
These are the kind of things that could run on a lane built over the sidewalk…
- allywilson@lemmy.mlEnglish19 hours
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.
- badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish11 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.worldEnglish9 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.worldEnglish14 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.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish6 hours
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.
With all due respect, that sounds like it should and could have been solved in a way other than banning a popular service.
- BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
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.
- rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish13 hours
They block sidewalks, they destroy bus stops, they hurt workers
