Starship robots roam the Oregon State University campus during the academic year, delivering food and other goods to students, but many new students may be unsure of how they work.
Starship robots are an experience only some college students get to experience as they are only at certain colleges across the country. According to Janel Steinberg, a Starship spokesperson, there are 50 campuses across the country that use Starship.
Starship is very simple to use, as you just download the app on your phone, and sign into your school account. Then you can select the on-campus merchant you wish to buy from.
Starship robots take food or other items from the store you picked on your phone, and deliver them to your desired destination. Alternatively, you can also choose pick-up in-store, and walk to the store and pick your items up yourself.
On the store side of Starship, merchant partners see the order on their devices, and then they unlock the robots to place the order in and send them out on delivery, according to Steinberg.
The places that use Starship on the Oregon State campus include all the dining halls and a lot of other locations around campus. These locations are:
- All dining halls
- Cascadia Market/Cafe in the International Living Learning Community
- Java II in the Valley Library
- Java Stop, Off The Quad, Rocket Burger, North Porch in the Memorial Union
- E. Cafe in Kelley Engineering Center
- Trader Bings in Austin Hall
- Dixon Cafe in the Dixon Recreation Center
- Ava’s Cafe in the Linus-Pauling Science Center
- Coffee Corral in Magruder Hall
A specialty location is Night Bites, based out of West Dining Hall, which you can order from between 8 pm and 11 pm. Night Bites has different types of food you can order for a late night study snack.
Starship was started because the co-founders believed it did not make much sense to use a car to deliver a snack, because cars contribute to pollution, and many schools did not have a food delivery system, according to Steinberg.
According to Steinberg, Starship is the leading provider of autonomous delivery services around the world. The robots have traveled more than 6.2 million miles.
