“We’re thrilled to be working with Grubhub to delight students and campus staff with robot delivery,” said Christian Bersch, CEO of Cartken. “This collaboration perfectly aligns with our mission to use robotics and AI technology to provide friction-free and environmentally sustainable delivery, and to have robots serve the community. We are excited to scale alongside Grubhub and offer robot delivery to students on campuses across the country.”
Grubhub: A part of Just Eat Takeaway.com which is a global online food delivery marketplace. It is connected with more than 32 million diners for the food that their favourite local restaurants love to serve. The food ordering is elevated via Grubhub via innovative restaurant technology and easy-to-use platforms for an improved delivery experience.
Grubhub is partnered with more than 320, 000 restaurants in over 4,000 U.S. cities. The partnership came into place in June 2022.
“Robot delivery is exciting for students and helps provide even better service and innovative solutions to our campus partners,” said Eric Harper, senior director of campus environments at Grubhub. “We’ve worked with Ohio State University for years on the campus dining front, and they are always an early adopter of solutions that create efficiencies for their operations and improve the student experience. We look forward to supporting our university partners and responding to their unique delivery environments as we roll out this technology at other campuses in the coming months.”
In the case of Cartken, autonomous robot platforms are used to bridge the customer distance with local businesses such as malls, business parks, and local neighborhoods. The team of Cartken combines deep expertise in self-driving cars, AI-powered robotics, and delivery operations.
The partnership is mainly targeting the college campuses such as Ohio State University with a pilot project. More than 250 college campuses are partnered with Grubhub across the United States for students to get the ability to integrate meal plans directly into their Grubhub accounts.
It also provides the restaurant with access to both on and off-campus delivery and pickup. Autonomous robots seem to be a perfect fit for a campus environment where cars are unable to navigate.
Cartken’s artificial intelligence is used by the robot with camera-based navigation and mapping technology. It is developed for small autonomous vehicles for safe operation around pedestrians. An option for the human override is possible in instanced such as a path is blocked. The robots guarantee a reliable operation with minimum delivery delay.
Cartken’s robots operate up to three miles per hour on campus and can handle different weather conditions such as rain and snow.
“Robot delivery has been very popular on campus this past school year, validating our prediction that students would appreciate autonomous mobile delivery,” said Zia Ahmed, senior director of Student Life Dining Services at Ohio State University. “We are excited about the return of robots to campus, and we have been testing the Cartken robots during the spring semester with the same vision to lower the cost of delivery, reduce the time it takes to deliver food, and enhance sustainability.”
Source: Grubhub