SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON – Starship Technologies, the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services, has revealed its 2021 Robot Wrap Up, highlighting the most popular and quirky requests and orders that its fleet of more than 1,000 robots around the world have received in the past year.
The difference between order habits in the UK and US is clear, with French fries, boneless wings, iced coffee and curly fries all among the top five most popular orders in the US, while breakfast appears to be the priority for Brits, with orders of milk, bananas, bread and eggs accounting for the most frequently ordered items on the other side of the Pond. Notably absent in the US – pizza, which has long been considered the go-to food for college students.
Here is a breakdown of the most popular food by region:
- Western US: boneless wings
- Midwest US: curly fries
- Eastern US: chicken fingers with fries
- Southern US: chicken fingers
- United Kingdom: milk
While 2021 seemed to be a year of comfort food and staples for deliveries, coffee and Chinese food have remained the overall top delivery items globally since Starship started commercial deliveries in 2018.
However, it’s not just food and drink that Starship’s fleet of robots have travelled more than three million (3,175,900 to be exact) miles (that’s 13 trips to the Moon) to deliver this year. While grocery and hot food delivery remains the primary business model, Starship’s robots have also played a pivotal role in an engagement (ring delivery by robot) and Milton Keynes’s bid for official UK city status (delivering a petition to Buckingham Palace), as well as helping Ryan Seacrest on American Idol, and just last week hanging out with the new Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz.
The record for the most orders by any individual goes to an individual at Arizona State University, who placed 230 orders with Starship during 2021, while the battle between the universities with the most early-birds and night-owls saw Oregon State University come out on top for the most late night (between 10pm-11pm) orders while Northern Arizona University students placed the most early morning (between 7am-8am) orders. And, in a twist on go big and stay home, the largest robot delivery of 2021 had a whopping 47 items!
Consumers can access Starship’s service via the Starship Food Delivery app, which is available for download on iOS and Android. Users can choose from a range of over 2,000 grocery and food & drink items, schedule their delivery, then drop a pin where they want their delivery to be sent. They can watch in real-time via an interactive map as the robot makes its journey to them. Once the robot arrives, they receive an alert, and can meet and unlock it through the app.
Starship Technologies operates commercially on a daily basis around the world. Its zero-emission robots make more than 100,000 road crossings every day and have completed more than two million commercial deliveries globally, more than any other autonomous delivery provider.
The robots use a combination of sensors, artificial intelligence and machine learning to travel on pavements and sidewalks and navigate around any obstacles, while computer vision-based navigation helps them map their location to the nearest inch.
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