Leading autonomous vehicle developer, Yandex Self-Driving Group announced a multi-year partnership with food delivery platform, Grubhub to create a faster and more cost-efficient delivery platform for college campuses across the United States. Over the course of this partnership, Yandex is hoping to reach over 250 campuses by deploying dozens of robots in the fall.
Grubhub, the leading online and mobile food delivery platform, partners with over 250 campuses across the United States and enables students to directly integrate their meal plans into Grubhub account while easily accessing restaurants both on and off campus for delivery and pickup. Yandex autonomous delivery robots can easily navigate pavements, crosswalks and pedestrian areas, and reach campus areas that are not easily accessible by vehicles. These attributes enable the robots to handle delivery tasks that previously required human intervention and enhance last-mile logistics automation. Robotic delivery offered by Yandex autonomous delivery robots is completely integrated into Grubhub app and is user-friendly and convenient.
These delivery robots will send a push notification to the user when it reaches the destination and the user can get their meals by opening the hatch on the rover through the Grubhub app. Yandex delivery robots – built on the same state-art-of-the art autonomous driving technology stack that the company’s autonomous cars work on – have already been tried and tested commercially in Russia through Yandex.Eats, the food delivery platform. According to the company, the rovers can operate day or night, in snow or rain, and in controlled or uncontrolled pedestrian situations. Since 2021, Yandex rovers have been fully functional and delivering orders from local restaurants in Ann Arbor city in Michigan.
According to Brigan Madigan, VP of corporate and campus partners at Grubhub, this partnership with Yandex is expected to alter the way college students think about and experience food delivery by offering them cost-effective, scalable, and quick food ordering and delivering capabilities to cater to the unique dining needs of the students.
