Universities accommodate food delivery robots | Hacker News Reader

Universities accommodate food delivery robots

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55 pointsdanso63 comments

My favorite detail in the article was about the intersection with beg buttons, where the robot people were trying to get the city to convert them to a properly functioning crosswalk that always showed a "walk" when the parallel road had a green light. If this is what it takes to get rid of beg buttons, I say let the robots spread to every corner of the earth.

Automatic sliding doors and sidewalk ramps are also nice to have. It seems robot-friendly infrastructure is pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

My apartment building has only steps leading up to the lobby door, which causes problems for deliveries and movers. I've thought of citing handicapped access as the justification for getting the property owner to put in a ramp.

It's disheartening how something as straight-forward as improving a town's walkability and reducing the threat posed by cars is framed as something evil that only a robot-wielding corporation corrupting officials would ever do.

In many cities the "walk" only shows when the cars have a green light AND a red no-left-turn signal, to protect pedestrians from getting hit by left-turning cars.

In yet other cities and intersections cars in all directions are stopped and pedestrians in all directions are allowed to go.

It's peculiar, because traffic engineers long ago found several ways to automatically detect when a car is waiting at a red light and trigger the signal change, but they just can't seem to figure out how to detect bicycles or pedestrians who are waiting for the same event.

Because cars on a road have obvious intention and clear rules to follow, but bicyclists/pedestrians on a sidewalk do not.

How do you know someone on a sidewalk is waiting to cross vs just stopping while talking to friend, checking their phone, etc? Or that someone walking towards a crosswalk actually intends to cross and isn't going to change direction?

You could paint a box on the ground and say "stand here to cross"?

...or just light the "WALK" sign when the parallel street gets its green.

It's not that simple, alas.

When the WALK sign is on, there's a minimum time required for pedestrian crossing that has to be allowed. Signals can switch faster and respond to traffic needs more quickly if they don't have to always block waiting for that crossing time.

IMO, the ideal solution is you add all-way crossing into every signal cycle. E.g. North/South traffic, then East/West traffic, then all-WALK (unless nobody pressed the WALK button). It's much safer - no worries about right-on-red or un-protected left turns hitting pedestrians, and pedestrians get the more efficient option to cross diagonally.

It /can/ be that simple, was my point. There's no need to invent a pedestrian sensor at all. In fact, why not have the pedestrian walkways always green, with the automotive signals only activating if traffic is detected?

The city I live near has walk signs come on automatically, followed about five seconds later by the parallel automobile light. This seems to be standard timing for a Leading Pedestrian Interval[1]. Because this happens in both directions it adds ~10 seconds to a roughly two-minute traffic cycle but it allows people to use the road without a beg button.

Certainly this would be a poor tradeoff in rural/suburban areas where most traffic cycles have no pedestrians or cyclists. Those use cases should use beg buttons.

But in a city where most traffic cycles include at least one pedestrian or cyclist then it seems like a useful tradeoff to increase convenience and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists. What's more it may increase automobile efficiency as well: adding a couple Leading Pedestrian Intervals to every traffic cycle takes similar overall time than adding a full Barnes Dance[2] to half the traffic cycles. So if more than half of the traffic cycles include pedestrians crossing then everyone is probably better off with automatic walk signs on a leading pedestrian interval.

Of course if the city wants to really encourage walking they can do both and have the beg buttons trigger a Barnes dance for those who are young, old, nervous, or just need extra time to cross.

[1] https://highways.dot.gov/safety/proven-safety-countermeasure...

[2] what you describe above where all walk signs are on and all automobiles are stopped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble

I love these little guys. They've been rolling them out in major cities here for the last year or so, and every time I see one rolling by I get a smile on my face. This is what machines are meant for, to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. :)

Whatever happened to Starship robots? I used to see them driving around Redwood City occasionally, around 2016. There was always a "minder", a human following along about 50 feet back. They were around for only about a year, and deployment never happened locally.

So they pivoted to working on college campuses?

Every now and then you notice one stuck in Mountain View on Castro Street through Covid period.

The whole idea always struck me as absurd and an example of how VC malinvestment was being driven by ZIRP and outright lies about autonomy by a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping the money train going.

Compared to self-driving cars, delivery robots are easier to accommodate to the point of actually becoming economical.

I see basically zero chance of consumer delivery robots being economical. Self-driving cars also have a low chance of panning out IMO -- it will not take many more incidents to kill the industry -- but if self-driving cars did pan out it would at least be a service I would use.

In contrast to SDCs, the delivery robots I have seen are bulky and take up a lot of sidewalk space. In contrast to delivery people, they don't climb stairs. If they did climb stairs, I don't want to be stuck behind one. As with SDCs, most people hate these things.

I think if they were humanoid-shaped it would help with some issues (take less space, climb stairs) but introduce other issues (less carrying capacity, far more complex/expensive). The only consumer-facing robot I've seen so far that solves a problem in my life, is the Roomba+competitors. I'm pretty skeptical that consumer robotics will be a big part of the future.

> Compared to self-driving cars, delivery robots are easier to accommodate to the point of actually becoming economical.

Seeing how delivery companies abuse labor laws and take advantage of undocumented immigrants to perform their service, I'd say delivery robots are a far more ethical solution as well.

> delivery robots are easier to accommodate to the point of actually becoming economical

Delivery robot co-founder here (Robby.io, YC S16). The economics are actually really, really hard.

1. A Honda Civic costs $24K. It's actually surprisingly difficult to build a sidewalk-sized robot for less than $15K if you include labor for assembly and if you don't have scale. And it isn't compute and sensors. It's everything else -- plastic, metal, structural stuff, crimping wires, motor mounts, gaskets, all of that. The form factor isn't something that is mass-produced already.

2. They can only deliver MAXIMUM 2km, anything beyond that the food gets cold. Even 2km is a stretch, customers complain of cold pizza. A lot of the existing human-driven delivery market comes from further deliveries, because you know, if you can walk to the restaurant you might actually be willing to take that walk.

3. Real estate for robot storage is a HUGE cost issue in the bay area. Rental warehouses are not cheap in Mountain View. And in places where rent is cheap, people tend to also be less busy and not need food delivered.

4. Teleoperation is also a huge cost. Full autonomy on sidewalks is not difficult, but dealing with human issues at stop signs and intersections is a very difficult issue to solve.

5. Getting restaurant staff to be willing to walk outside the restaurant and drop food into a robot is an issue. The current state of many restaurants is that they just put orders on a shelf and delivery drivers walk in and pick them up without intervention. They just don't have the staff to deal with a robot that can't come inside. Requiring staff to find the food, walk outside, find the right robot, and drop it in would be a regression from their point of view.

All this stuff adds up, quickly.

This is basically not true. Low end automobiles and solutions like ebikes, etc have the volume to sustain production at crazy low margins. Despite tech fantasies, delivery bots, drones, etc. aren't even close.

They're still operating in Tallinn, Estonia. I used one to get ice cream a few months ago, and although there weren't too many places I could order from in the app, it was a nice experience, much better than DoorDash or another gig delivery service.

They're still trundling along pavements in Cambridge UK, doing small deliveries in a very local area for the Co-op supermarket. My assumption is this is burning VC cash. They do get around without human minders, at least, though AIUI there is some kind of "remote human pilot intervenes in case of difficulty" system.

I saw one once that managed to run itself up a ramp into the building work being done on a house :-)

I saw one driving up a ramp into the back of a box truck. The box truck was parked in the middle of a pedestrian street.

Starship was big at Purdue, this article says they launched 30 robots on campus in 2019: https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q3/purdue-univ...

When I visited the campus last April they were everywhere.

Operated with food delivery robots for two years in a major downtown city area. City councils were excited but they can't accommodate as much as school councils though.

Also fun fact, the robot companies are usually contracted and dealing with the food service providers to the college than to the college themselves.

A top level comment is this actually helps with movement/ADA at the same time.

Seems like a great early adopter candidate for something like Peachtree Corner's system - https://cities-today.com/peachtree-corners-launches-first-un...

I remember seeing a starship struggling to cross a road for minutes in Tallinn, Estonia, in Autumn 2019. Seems like nothing has changed regarding their inaptitude. > "Rachel’s order took 13 minutes to cross the street”

AFAIK, most of the Starship robots in Tallinn are for training purposes, not actual delivery.

woah, there was a Canadian company called Tiny Mile (who have better cuter looking robots) that do the same thing, the city banned them and then they moved to Miami and are having success apparently?

https://www.blogto.com/tech/2023/02/tech-startup-success-us-...

Looks like they also operate in NC like Starship, is it because of The Triangle? is the demand really that high there?

I'm not surprised that universities push for these robots as they will also benefit.

Curious if these robots can last through snow storms

As someone in the Triangle, no I've never seen one of these. The article mentions Charlotte specifically.

Oh I saw a bunch of Tiny Mile bots a while ago in Brickell. I was trapped in traffic so seeing the cute little bots cheered me up.

Wasn't this a thing at Cal like a decade ago? I vaguely remember trying to tip them over on visits to Berkeley.

Also, big fan of the Computational Journalism Lab Dan!

Wait 'till these things bully pedestrians out of the sidewalks.

the only reason I think food delivery robots have a place is because they don't need to be tipped to be happy.

Seems like a solution looking for a problem. We don't need food delivery robots, people are happy to do the same thing (just look at Uber eats, DoorDash, postmates, etc). And since the robots already charge you a delivery fee, you may as well pay that money to an actual person rather than a company.

you don't have to awkwardly wait behind the door for delivery person to leave after dropping of your daily chicken nugget order.

Or you can be cordial and great them at the door. Food delivery has been a thing for decades. I don't like that people treat other delivery drivers so differently just because they are part of an app ecosystem rather than employed by a particular restaurant.

I sometimes order delivery when I’m not in the mood to interact with other people. If I wanted to interact with someone, I’d drive the short distance to the restaurant.

i am just shy

Or maybe it's because this is the first time in history that you don't have to greet them. Turns out most people don't want to do so.

I think you may be projecting your own stuff on the general public.

I wonder if there will be an expectation to tip the food delivery robots

Parking at my university was a complete shitshow. This seems like a great solution for the campus.

> people are happy to do the same thing (just look at Uber eats, DoorDash, postmates, etc)

The labor costs for these are rising precipitously in many states. I've almost eliminated app-based food delivery in New York, as have many of my friends.

When I was in college, I think you could have pretty easily hired college students to do food delivery on campus at minimum hourly wage. They would have been happy for the cash.

Minimum hourly wage is becoming a huge cost for these types of jobs.

Food delivery is so absurdly expensive that automation can help the consumer.

I doubt that adding less expensive automation is going to somehow reduce the price for the end customer. The savings will go entirely into shareholders' pockets and the cost to the customer will remain the same and/or rise.

> Seems like a solution looking for a problem. We don't need food delivery robots, people are happy to do the same thing (just look at Uber eats, DoorDash, postmates, etc).

Once I ordered from one of those companies on a brutally rainy day, and the rider who delivered my order was a mother taking her infant daughter along with her. Before she arrived I was kind of frustrated as the order was taking twice as long as expected to be delivered, but once both of them showed up at my front door all soaking wet with the mother apologizing, it broke my heart.

I'm not so sure people are happy to deliver stuff to others. They work jobs because they really need the pay. You might argue delivery companies didn't created poverty, but they aren't exactly paying a living wage either.

Robots makes food delivery less exploitative.

The main critique I have of your post is that it's very possible that the woman doesn't have other options. In the absence of UBI and other socialist utopias, she and her daughter will probably fall marginally further down the economic ladder.

> The main critique I have of your post is that it's very possible that the woman doesn't have other options.

I'm not comfortable with this line of argument. It makes it sound like these delivery companies are generous charities that act on the riders' best interests. Instead, they are just exploiting the most vulnerable not only on their extremely low pay and lack of welfare and benefits but also by treating them as disposable servants. It sounds a bit like something rich people say during a banquet about servants taking home their scraps. That doesn't sit right by me.

At least delivery robots are a realization of how these types look at people.

Yes. Seems like they've never interacted with the "servant" class and love to only mingle with those in the company cafeteria.

People are happier doing what they want, instead of delivering food (that a robot could deliver) just to make rent.

In 10 years this situation will play out across all jobs in all industries. Nobody from janitors to theoretical physicists will be spared. All work, everywhere, will gradually acquire an ever-deepening sense of futility. Until all anyone can see is that the only people doing this pointless work are the "working" poor. And then we'll ask "why are some rich and some poor?" and discover that economics is just a scam, having no bearing on reality. The rich are con artists, the poor are marks. And why are the poor marks? Because they've been worked so hard for so long that all they can manage is their own survival. If the poor learn how the scam works, there won't be any rich people anymore. That's why the rich do everything in their power to prevent all forward progress in all areas of life that may lift this veil of deception.

Get mad at me, equivocate, deny and deflect. It doesn't matter. It's too late, and this is all going to happen faster than anyone ever saw coming.

An analogy: I used to get mad when I spilled my coffee each morning. Now I observe the nature and character of the spill, how my hurriedness or caution has little bearing on the odds of it happening, and appreciate that the universe has spilled for me, to give me a little sign that it's still there. That's what it feels like watching increasingly absurd talking heads on TV distract from anything and everything that's even remotely related to UBI.

Just because I know the spill is coming, doesn't mean that I can stop it.

Have you considered that the rich would justify culling the surplus population?

What if someone actually wants to deliver food? Maybe you like driving, you like being alone in your car and listening to music or podcasts, shuttling food orders around the town. Maybe it's fun for you.

That's not a particularly strong reason to force the rest of us to do so. It's similar to the in office vs remote work scenario: it's great if you want to work from an office, but it's not great if that requires everyone else to as well.

> People are happier doing what they want, instead of delivering food (that a robot could deliver) just to make rent.

They're delivery food because it's all they can get/interview for/network with... It's not, "Oh this robot is delivering food now so I can go get that job at FANG."

People are happier having a place to live and food to eat.

No argument that the rich are con artists, in a way, but not to the extent you mean. Most jobs are terrible - raw sewage? Handing drywall? Meat processing? etc. They are awful. Robots won't be there any time soon if ever. They probably won't even replace retail workers in the next 10 years.

Keynes predicted we would be working 15-hour weeks. He was wrong because he missed that the enslavement was, in fact, the point.

While I’m very sceptical of these robots (it’s basically self driving cars all over again; roads are harder to use than people think), you could make a decent argument that the ‘gig economy’ stuff is a product of the financial crisis recession and its depressed labour market; as major economies have returned to functionally full employment, the economics have become ever shakier.

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