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Motorised robo-coolbox biz Starship makes lunchtime pitch to campus-dwellers

Too lazy to get a meal deal? Ask for drone deliveries

Robo-coolbox firm Starship Technologies is now touting its services to campus-based universities, businesses and other places where people might be too lazy to walk to the shops for a bite to eat.

The Estonian firm, founded by one-time Skype starter-uppers Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, specialises in robot last-mile deliveries, with the little motorised boxes driving themselves direct to customers.

Practical trials of Starship's autonomous delivery bots have been taking place in London and San Francisco. Its "global rollout" means the firm is offering to bring its robotic deliveries to anyone with a suitably sized campus who is willing to stump up for it.

Those delivery robots roll around at speeds of up to 6kmph (3.7mph) while using pavements to get around within a 4.8km (three-mile) radius of their home base. They are an increasingly common sight on Greenwich Peninsula, in southeast London, where a particularly long-running trial of the tech has been taking place in conjunction with takeaway app Just Eat.

Heinla said in a canned quote: "We've already partnered with Compass Group on the Intuit Mountain View campus in the US," adding: "We are planning to dramatically expand our services and distribute thousands of robots across campuses around the world by 2019."

Starship said that its robots have covered 161,000km (100,000 miles) since 2015, and have allegedly encountered 15 million people. ®

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