Episode 97: Rise of the Robots, ft. Chris Neider (Starship Technologies)
Cris Neider is the Director of Business Development at Starship Technologies. Chris has been head of business dev since 2018, spearheading Starship's expansion into university campuses across the US. Starship operates in over 20 schools, including UCLA, UT Knoxville, SMU, NCAT and many others, delivering food from all partnering businesses to students, faculty, and visitors. In addition, Chris is in charge of recruiting schools for the service and partners with on-campus dining facilities to achieve this.
How Big Is The Delta Between Industry And College Campuses?
Starship Technologies has been around since 2014 putting robots in cities, industrial campuses, and business parks all over the world. If we think about the autonomous vehicle market, then it is still in the early days. Universities, especially in the United States have been in this location. Delivery has really been fast tracked in a way that most of us don not see out in the world. Many campuses across the country over 25 years have now preferred ways of getting stuff is having a robot bring it to you. This isn’t just a few cool pieces of technology out in the word. This is tens of thousands of deliveries right every week. and hundreds of thousands deliveries every month that are going to real student placing real orders from real restaurants, getting stuff brought to them. Universities have been in this interesting location where the adoption is really taken off. The environment is right and that you find those locations. New technology is about finding that place where you have the right set of circumstances that come together and universities are leading this in a big way.
What Protection You Have For The Robots In Case Of It Getting Damaged Or Stolen?
The robot travels on the side walk and travels at a maximum speed of 4 or 5 miles an hour and that is usually when there is a clear path. With the sensors and camera the robot will know if an object is detected or not. Even when it comes to crossing the street, it crosses at the signal that is vetted and a lot of times crossing with a bunch of other students. Another key factor is that safety is the most important thing. Because of the mass and speed of the robot it plays into the favor of Starship Technologies. With the sensors, it has different ranges of specialization to make sure that you know, down to the inch, you are able to know how close or far it is from an object. Likewise if an object is coming toward the robot, then the robot stops its motion until the object has passed the robot. When dealing with students, they can tend to play around with the robot but when they see that the robot response back by stopping, they start to see how amazing the root is and start to fall in love with it. The robot can also communicate with you by voice command. There is an agility where the robot is about 99% autonomous and there is a team of operators that can log in and assess the situation in addition to communicating with an onsite staff and even campus police if needed.
Who Are The Decision Makers When Trying To Bring The Robots To a New Campus?
The dining program is a key part of making all this happen but there’s all the other groups to bring a autonomous robot driving around a campus who need to understand it, who need to se-risk it, and then need to ask questions, and ultimately who needs to support it. This goes all the way up to the presidents office and all the way down to an IT office, campus safety police, etc. There is a need to build a stakeholder and all of these different departments who they want to understand the technology they want to make. They de-risk it as much as they can and that they want to support it and are also excited about it. That is usually the most difficult at the first couple of campuses because of Starship Technologies being over 25 campuses.
Contact Chris Neider: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisneider/
Learn more about Starship Technologies: https://www.starship.xyz/
Starship Technologies Twitter: https://twitter.com/starshiprobots
Starship Technologies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starshiprobots/
Starship Technologies YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-XAfJfuf73xLjheIMELkZg
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