Slashdot Mirror
Pepsi Is Testing a Snack Delivery Robot On Select College Campuses (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: College students used to have to fend for themselves at the campus convenient store but soon may have the snacks coming to them courtesy of a new delivery service. The PepsiCo Hello Goodness Snackbot, an autonomous delivery robot, will now run snacks around select college campuses to satiate whatever case of the munchies it can. Students, staff, and faculty at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California can now order snacks between 9AM and 5PM through the Snackbot app, which is currently only available on iOS. The robot will deliver goods at 50 designated Snackbot areas across campuses. The delivery bot can go more than 20 miles on a single charge and includes a camera, headlights, and all-wheel drive to help it navigate through tough terrain if need be. The Snackbots are part of the company's goal of expanding the reach of their healthier product lines to 50,000 points of presence by the end of 2019.
If they want a snack, don't students just reach for their selection of snacks that they've previously purchased and stored?
Because I suspect that the snacks delivered by a robot are not likely to be as cheap as snacks purchased on a shopping trip at the cheap place down the road a bit...
And when I was a student, money was important as I didn't have any!
so... what am I missing here?
Are modern students so flush with cash and so poor with planning that they find it easier to order snacks when they're feeling peckish?
And the App Store gets 30% of all munchie profits.
For sure someone is going to steal that bit and all the snacks it is carrying.
The robot will deliver goods at 50 designated Snackbot areas across campuses.
How is this better than the dozens of vending machines already all over campus? If it's not going to actually bring me my junk food, how is it an improvement? The difference is that with the bot I have to pick what I want in the app, go to the designated location, and then wait for the bot to show up with my order.
Clearly, they have no idea about when people want snacks.
I'd like to order a 2 liter diet coke please SnackBot.
College isn't a nursing home. At least get up out of your chair to get a snack.
I predict this robot will be abused heavily by drunk college students.
Sorry corporations, robots will be vandalized and disabled before you think you can replace humans with machines.
Same goes for automated cars and trucks. You think the teamsters are going to let self driving trucks take over their jobs in the future? They'll be out in BFE destroying these things. And trust me, the state police aren't going to rush to the aide of an unmanned vehicle in anytime to catch the crooks.
...calories chase you!
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Robot: what drink you want to take?
Student: uneducated robot, i want Coca-Cola!
Robot: i'm sorry, i've not Coca-Cola, but i can offer you Pepsi-Cola.
Student: i'm rage, i want Coca-Cola again!
Robot: you can't.
Student: i will push you to the downstairs uneducated robot!.
Robot: rrrooorrr.
Another student: how much money is deposited in this malfunctioning robot? Let's go to try it! A few $$$ buckets are for us.
It's for the inebriated.
Are modern students so flush with cash and so poor with planning that they find it easier to order snacks when they're feeling peckish?
Yes. They are 18-19 if they live on campus and everything they do is paid with massive loans anyway.
..our technological wizards turn their attention to this.
..and you people wonder why it is our planet and species is shunned so thoroughly by the interstellar community that we can't even be sure they exist.
This *IS* a robot, and it has a simplified set of parameters for thinking it has been paid...
And these ARE college kids, who are notoriously both 1) Broke as shit, and 2) Have more time than sense, and-- presumably 3) Desire snack food.
If they push this thing in a college with a healthy CompSci department, how long do you think it would take for there to be an impromptu hack-a-thon on this thing?
The world is fighting unhealthy eating habits and obesity epidemics. Meanwhile Pepsi is working hard to find new ways to sneak addictive empty calories into your body.
We are now at the point where everyone is too f*cking lazy to walk to the vending machine to buy some potato chips.
If someone see one of these, check something for me? Turn it over and look underneath to see if it's made by "Buy-N-Large" corporation.
Thanks.
#DeleteFacebook
I'm guessing this is step 1 to work out the glitches and then move into higher value items, or generalized in-city delivery.
Between 9am and 5pm, really? That's when college students are up and around campus anyway (OK not all of them by 9 but you get the idea). This service might actually see some use if it operated between 7pm and 3am. Why only run a robot during the day? Is it going back to home base where a tech checks on it regularly or something?
Also from the story:
Matt Camino, Director of e-Commerce at University of the Pacific, remarked, "This innovative technology from PepsiCo is enhancing campus life for our students, staff, and faculty alike, who have embraced this new way of snacking from PepsiCo."
Does he have a job lined up with Pepsi or something?
Is this reality, or Black Mirror episode?
I keep getting them confused.