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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.
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.
They'd probably have more interest and make more money if they got the thing to deliver weed instead.
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?