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Robots Hit streets Of U.S. UK As Demand For Food Delivery Grows

Published

4 years ago

November 3, 2021

Robot food delivery is no longer the stuff of science fiction. But you may not see it in your neighborhood anytime soon, Associated Press reports.

Hundreds of little robots __ knee-high and able to hold around four large pizzas __ are now navigating college campuses and even some city sidewalks in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere.

While robots were being tested in limited numbers before the coronavirus hit, the companies building them say pandemic-related labor shortages and a growing preference for contactless delivery have accelerated their deployment.

“We saw demand for robot usage just go through the ceiling,” said Alastair Westgarth, the CEO of Starship Technologies, which recently completed its 2 millionth delivery. “I think demand was always there, but it was brought forward by the pandemic effect.”

Starship has more than 1,000 robots in its fleet, up from just 250 in 2019. Hundreds more will be deployed soon. They’re delivering food on 20 U.S. campuses; 25 more will be added soon. They’re also operating on sidewalks in Milton Keynes, England; Modesto, California; and the company’s hometown of Tallin, Estonia.

Robot designs vary; some have four wheels and some have six, for example. But generally, they use cameras, sensors, GPS and sometimes laser scanners to navigate sidewalks and even cross streets autonomously. They move around 5 mph.

Remote operators keep tabs on multiple robots at a time but they say they rarely need to hit the brakes or steer around an obstacle. When a robot arrives at its destination, customers type a code into their phones to open the lid and retrieve their food.

The robots have drawbacks that limit their usefulness for now. They’re electric, so they must recharge regularly. They’re slow, and they generally stay within a small, pre-mapped radius.

They’re also inflexible. A customer can’t tell a robot to leave the food outside the door, for example. And some big cities with crowded sidewalks, like New York, Beijing and San Francisco, aren’t welcoming them.

But Bill Ray, an analyst with the consulting firm Gartner, says the robots make a lot of sense on corporate or college campuses, or in newer communities with wide sidewalks.

“In the places where you can deploy it, robot delivery will grow very quickly,” Ray said.

Ray said there have been few reports of problems with the robots, other than an occasional gaggle of kids who surround one and try to confuse it. Starship briefly halted service at the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 after a wheelchair user said a robot blocked her access to a ramp. But the university said deliveries resumed once Starship addressed the issue.

Patrick Sheck, a junior at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, gets deliveries from a Starship robot three or four times a week as he’s leaving class.

“The robot pulls up just in time for me to get some lunch,” Sheck said. Bowling Green and Starship charge $1.99 plus a service fee for each robot delivery.

Rival Kiwibot, with headquarters in Los Angeles and Medellin, Columbia, says it now has 400 robots making deliveries on college campuses and in downtown Miami.

Delivery companies are also jumping into the market. Grubhub recently partnered with Russian robot maker Yandex to deploy 50 robots on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Grubhub plans to add more campuses soon, although the company stresses that the service won’t go beyond colleges for now.

U.S. delivery orders jumped 66% in the year ending in June, according to NPD, a data and consulting firm. And delivery demand could remain elevated even after the pandemic eases because customers have gotten used to the convenience.

Ji Hye Kim, chef and managing partner of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, restaurant Miss Kim, relied heavily on robot delivery when her dining room was closed last year. Kim had partnered with a local robot company, Refraction AI, shortly before the pandemic began.

Kim prefers robots to third-party delivery companies like DoorDash, which charge significantly more and sometimes cancel orders if they didn’t have enough drivers. Delivery companies also bundle multiple orders per trip, she said, so food sometimes arrives cold. Robots take just one order at a time.

Kim said the robots also excite customers, who often post videos of their interactions.

“It’s very cute and novel, and it didn’t have to come face to face with people. It was a comfort,” Kim said. Delivery demand has dropped off since her dining room reopened, but robots still deliver around 10 orders per day.

While Kim managed to hang on to her staff throughout the pandemic, other restaurants are struggling to find workers. In a recent survey, 75% of U.S. restaurant owners told the National Restaurant Association that recruiting and retaining employees is their biggest challenge.

That has many restaurants looking to fill the void with robot delivery.

“There is no store in the country right now with enough delivery drivers,” said Dennis Maloney, senior vice president and chief digital officer at Domino’s Pizza.

Domino’s is partnering with Nuro, a California startup whose 6-foot-tall self-driving pods go at a maximum speed of 25 mph on streets, not sidewalks. Nuro is testing grocery and food delivery in Houston, Phoenix and Mountain View, California.

Maloney said it’s not a question of if, but of when, robots will start doing more deliveries. He thinks companies like Domino’s will eventually use a mix of robots and drivers depending on location. Sidewalk robots could work on a military base, for example, while Nuro is ideal for suburbs. Highway driving would be left to human workers.

Maloney said Nuro delivery is more expensive than using human drivers for now, but as the technology scales up and gets more refined, the costs will go down.

For cheaper sidewalk robots __ which cost an estimated $5,000 or less __ it’s even easier to undercut human delivery costs. The average Grubhub driver in Ohio makes $47,650 per year, according to the job site Indeed.com.

But robots don’t always cost delivery jobs. In some cases, they help create them. Before Starship’s robots arrived, Bowling Green didn’t offer delivery from campus dining spots. Since then, it has hired more than 30 people to serve as runners between kitchens and robots, Bowling Green dining spokesman Jon Zachrich said.

Brendan Witcher, a technology analyst with the consulting firm Forrester, says it’s easy to get excited about the Jetsons-like possibility of robot delivery. But ultimately, robots will have to prove they create an advantage in some way.

“It’s possible that we see this emerge into something else,” he said. “But it’s the right time and place for companies considering robots to test them and learn from them and do their own evaluation.”

(AP)

Related Topics:#UK food scarcity Robot U.S.

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Trump Warns Of More Strikes In Nigeria If Attacks On Christians Continue

Published

2 days ago

January 9, 2026

Editor

US President Donald Trump has warned that he could authorise additional military strikes in Nigeria if attacks against Christians continue, citing the security situation in the West African nation as a key concern.

In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Trump was asked whether the Christmas Day strikes in Sokoto State, which targeted Islamist militants, were intended as part of a broader campaign. “I’d love to make it a one-time strike. But if they continue to kill Christians, it will be a many-time strike,” he said.

Trump’s comments follow his 2025 designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” due to what he described as an “existential threat” to its Christian population. The remarks have drawn criticism from Nigerian officials, who insist that jihadist groups target people regardless of religion. “Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike” are affected, a government spokesperson said, rejecting claims that Christians are being singled out.

When pressed about reports that most victims of jihadist groups in Nigeria are Muslims, Trump responded, “I think that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria. But it’s mostly Christians.” Nigeria, with a population exceeding 230 million, is roughly evenly divided between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north.

The December strikes targeted camps run by a jihadist group known as Lakurawa in Sokoto, a largely Muslim region near the border with Niger. Both the US and Nigerian authorities have linked the militants to Islamic State-affiliated groups in the Sahel, although the IS has not formally claimed any association with Lakurawa. Details of casualties from the strikes remain unclear, as neither government has provided official figures.

Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar said the operation was a “joint effort” and emphasised that it was not motivated by religion. He confirmed that the strikes had the approval of President Bola Tinubu and included
participation by Nigerian armed forces. Addressing the timing of the strikes, Tuggar added that they were unrelated to Christmas, though Trump described them as a “Christmas present”.

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Science Discovers Why Hungry, Broke Men Prefer Bigger Breasts

Published

2 days ago

January 9, 2026

Editor

A scientific study has found that men who feel financially insecure or hungry are more likely to find larger female breasts attractive.

The research was published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE and was conducted by psychologists Viren Swami and Martin J. Tovée.

The study examined whether breast size acts as a signal of fat reserves and access to resources, and whether men facing resource insecurity rate larger breast sizes as more attractive than men who feel economically secure.

Researchers carried out two separate studies across Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

In the first study, 266 men from three areas in Malaysia were assessed. The locations represented low, medium and high socioeconomic backgrounds. Participants were shown rotating computer-generated images of women with different breast sizes and asked to rate which they found most attractive.

The findings showed a clear socioeconomic pattern.

Men from low-income rural areas preferred larger breasts.

Men from middle-income towns preferred medium to large breasts.

Men from high-income urban areas preferred smaller to medium breasts.

PLOS ONE study showing how hunger and financial insecurity affect men’s breast size preferences
Cover page of a PLOS ONE study examining how resource insecurity influences men’s breast size preferences. Source: PLOS ONE

As stated in the study, “Men from relatively low socioeconomic sites rated larger breast sizes as more physically attractive than did participants in moderate socioeconomic sites, who in turn rated larger breast sizes as more attractive than individuals in a high socioeconomic site.”

The researchers noted that the lower a man’s financial security, the stronger his preference for larger breast size.

The second study focused on hunger rather than income.

In Britain, 124 male university students were divided into two groups. Sixty-six participants were classified as hungry, while 58 had recently eaten. Both groups viewed the same breast size images under identical conditions.

Hungry men consistently rated larger breasts as more attractive than men who were full.

According to the researchers, “Hungry men rated a significantly larger breast size as more physically attractive than did the satiated group. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that resource security impacts upon men’s attractiveness ratings based on women’s breast size.”

The researchers explained that these shifts suggest attraction is not fixed but responsive to immediate conditions.

They noted that men experiencing hunger or financial pressure may place greater value on physical traits that signal access to resources or stability.

The study added that temporary states such as hunger can shape attraction in the same way long-term economic conditions do, reinforcing the idea that social and environmental factors play a key role in how physical attractiveness is judged.

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Man With Lengthy Criminal Record Shoots Nigerian To Death Inside Bus In Canada

Published

2 days ago

January 9, 2026

Editor

A 40-year-old man with an extensive criminal history has been charged with first-degree murder after a Nigerian national was shot dead on a GO bus at the Yorkdale GO Bus Terminal in Toronto, marking the city’s first homicide of 2026.

Toronto Police, in a statement on their website, said officers were called to the terminal, near Yorkdale Road and Allen Road, at about 7 p.m. on Sunday, January 4, following reports of a shooting. Investigators allege that both the suspect and the victim boarded a GO bus at the terminal, where the suspect shot the victim before fleeing the scene on foot.

According to the statement, officers arrived to find a man suffering from a gunshot wound, but despite carrying out life-saving measures, the Nigerian was pronounced dead at the scene.

The victim was later identified as Osemwengie Irorere, a 46-year-old man from Nigeria, the Toronto police said in a later statement.

Local media reports noted that an eyewitness who was seated just behind the victim said the bus had been dark and crowded as passengers waited to depart when a single gunshot rang out.

“I assumed it was a popped tyre or something, but immediately after, a guy sitting in front of me got up, shoved his hands in his pocket and ran off the bus,” the witness said, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.

“Right after, I stood up and I looked at the seat in front of me and I saw a guy, bleeding,” he added, saying he could smell smoke in the air after the shot was fired.

Police said the suspect was located and arrested a short time later near the Yorkdale subway station, and a firearm was recovered.

The accused has been identified as Tyrel Gibson, 40, of Toronto. He appeared at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre on Monday, January 5.

Court documents show that Gibson has a lengthy criminal record dating back to 2000, with nearly two dozen charges. He has previously been convicted of offences including attempted murder and firearm-related crimes. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, using a firearm, possession of a firearm with ammunition and possession of an unauthorised firearm and was handed a lifetime weapons prohibition. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2017, although it remains unclear how much of that term he served.