Starship Technologies now offering autonomous robot delivery on 50 US college campuses

Starship Technologies, which claims to be the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services, says it is now offering its service to 50 college campuses across the US.

This includes several new schools launching services, including Wichita State University, Boise State University and The University of New Orleans.

Starship’s fleet of more than 2,000 robots provides deliveries in half of the US states as well as locations around the globe and more than 1.1 million students in the US have access to the service.

Starship is introducing new features this year, including wireless charging and robot characters. Starship is the first delivery company to wirelessly charge its robots, which increases utilization and efficiency.

The service will be rolling out across all locations providing a completely touchless end-to-end experience as Starship continues to trailblaze the autonomous delivery market.

Starship is already profitable in several locations and industry-first innovations like this are placing Starship on the verge of being a profitable business.

Students can also add some free customization to their deliveries. New this year, robot characters will be roaming the campuses and can be requested to make the delivery.

The character voices include Sunshine (for a dose of positivity), Harry (British accent for a proper butler experience) and Asher (keeping it cool and casual).

Students can alternatively continue the popular option of having the robot play a song from a pre-selected list. All options are available in the app (iOS and Android) and can be selected when placing an order.

Starship robots operate at L4 autonomy, making deliveries completely autonomously. Earlier this year, Starship announced that one of its robots completed 24 deliveries in 16 hours, 100 per cent autonomously without any human intervention or oversight (current L5 record).

Chris Neider, VP of business development at Starship Technologies, says: “Our robots have proved to be immensely popular, especially among college students who often adopt them as another campus mascot.

“We like to keep innovating and the new schools and new robot characters are great additions for the new school year.”

Starship has been providing on-demand robot deliveries to US college campuses since 2019, with the robots quickly being embraced by the campus communities. There are social media pages devoted to them, often filled with robot selfies.

Service at most schools has launched or will launch soon, with some going live this school year. Delivery hours will vary by campus and will include a variety of national and local eateries at each university.

In most instances, the service is part of the meal plan, making it convenient for students to get deliveries when and where they want them.

Starship Technologies operates commercially on a daily basis around the world.

Its zero-emission robots make more than 150,000 road crossings every day and have completed more than five million commercial deliveries and traveled more than 10 million kilometers (6 million miles) globally, more than any other autonomous delivery provider.