This fall, faculty, students, and staff at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have noticed a new presence on campus sidewalks: food delivery robots. In partnership with Starship Technologies, M Food Co. has introduced a fleet of 15 electric-powered, self-driving robots that deliver food to students, faculty, and staff across the University's Minneapolis campus.
Users place an order from select campus eateries through an app, pay a few dollars for delivery within 30 minutes, and track their order via an interactive map. Once the roughly two-by-two-foot vehicle reaches its destination, users unlock it with the app to retrieve their food.
The one-year pilot program’s reduced environmental impact aligns with the University of Minnesota’s broader goals to lower emissions and support sustainable transportation initiatives. (The U of M has committed to reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent over the next decade compared to 2019 levels and will become carbon neutral by 2050.) According to Starship Technologies, the six-wheeled robots consume less energy per delivery than boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, offering a low-emission alternative to traditional delivery vehicles. In spring 2025, solar-powered charging stations will be installed on campus, allowing the robots to recharge using renewable energy.
“These being fully electric was a big point that the University was interested in,” says Chris Elrod, senior director of marketing and communications for M Food Co. “These do limit the [number] of delivery and service vehicles that would potentially be on campus, which reduces the amount of emissions.” Beyond sustainability, the delivery robots provide a real-world opportunity for students and staff to engage with autonomous technology in an everyday context. The all-weather robots navigate using computer vision, GPS, and advanced sensors and travel up to four miles per hour while detecting and avoiding obstacles. Having made about 1,200 deliveries to date, the robots’ safe and predictable behavior on sidewalks has been helping build trust in this type of technology.
“This service will get people more familiar with autonomous vehicles or vehicles that are able to maneuver themselves,” says CTS scholar Frank Douma, a researcher at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs who studies policy and legal issues related to self-driving vehicles. “People can come to understand that [the vehicles] are safe, they're polite, and they aren't going to take you out when you're in the middle of the sidewalk or pose other risks.”
As the program gains traction, University officials and researchers envision expanding applications for autonomous vehicles. On some of the other 30-plus campuses Starship Technologies partners with, bookstores and various university departments are also part of the delivery program. Ultimately, the program may provide lessons for other potential autonomous transport options.
“If you can [expand] to the scale where you move people, it has some real potential to be able to provide transportation services when they’re otherwise hard to do or expensive to do,” says Douma. “That's everything from helping somebody who maybe is nursing a broken leg, to somebody who is permanently in a wheelchair, to people who just want rides at unusual times of the day in order to get around campus.”
—Emma McIntyre, CTS communications intern
