The next time you order a takeaway, it might be flown directly to your door. Today, Deliveroo has launched its first drone delivery service for customers in Ireland. Drones travelling at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour (80 kph) will carry food from restaurants to customers in as little as three minutes. Upon arrival, the drone will hover above the customer's home and gently lower the food to the ground on a tether before returning to the delivery hub. Launching in Blanchardstown, on the outskirts of Dublin, the trial will cover a 1.8-mile (3km) radius, reaching up to 150,000 people.

Whether it's turning off lights when not using them or bringing a reusable water bottle instead of buying a plastic one, many of us try to take measures to reduce our carbon footprint. Now, Sainsbury's has opened a new store that even makes your weekly food shop more eco-friendly. The'ground-breaking' store in Hook, Hampshire, is Sainsbury's most energy-efficient supermarket yet. It has several impressive features, including doors on chilled cabinets, 700 solar panels on the roof and even floor sensors that adjust the LED lights in response to natural light. 'This is a really proud moment for Sainsbury's as we launch a brilliant new supermarket that puts our commitment to reducing our impact on the environment into clear focus,' said Ryan Cox, Sainsbury's Hook Store Manager.

"The future of delivery, today: this is our bold promise," says Lauri Vain (VP of Engineering at Starship), adding, "With a combination of mobile technology, our global fleet of autonomous robots, and partnerships with stores and restaurants, we are helping to make the local delivery industry faster, cleaner, smarter and more cost-efficient, and we are very excited about our partnership with ESPROS and its unique chip technology." Starship Technologies is based in San Francisco with its main engineering office in Estonia. Starship's sidewalk delivery robots travel up to 4 mph (6.4 kph) and weighs around 80 lbs (176 kg). They can carry around 20 lbs (44 kg) at a time. The robots uses a mixture of computer vision and GPS to know its location.

CHICAGO and SAN FRANCISCO--Grubhub is now offering orders delivered via a robot on college campuses across the U.S. The food-delivery company is partnering with Starship Technologies, an autonomous delivery service, to provide the robot deliveries. The service is available at the University of Kentucky, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Wayne State University, Southern Methodist University and Fairfield University. Grubhub says the robot deliveries will be available at multiple other college campuses later this year. More than 170,000 students will have access to robot deliveries across these campuses, says Grubhub. Starship's robots offer deliver at over 25 schools across the U.S. through its global fleet of over 2,000 robots.

Starship Technologies, one of the earlier companies to enter the outdoor robot delivery market, recently laid off 11% of its global workforce. The company, which has engineering headquarters in Estonia and business headquarters in San Francisco, said it has been negatively impacted by the "dramatic downward shifts" in the global economy and investment market. While it's unclear exactly how many employees Starship has, a LinkedIn search finds 622 people list Starship as their current employer. On top of the layoffs, Starship is closing a small number of unnamed service locations in the U.S. and Germany over the next two months. It said all of the changes focus on cost savings and improving profitability.

Starship Technologies is also being tested in a small British town, where small robots are now serving breakfast milk to residents to reduce early traffic, reduce shopping and of course save energy. As part of a collaboration between Co-op, Starship Technologies and the local administration, robots for 12,000 Camborne residents will transport ordered goods from the local supermarket. According to the company that makes the robots Medium transmission uses the same amount of energy as a kettle to boil a cup of water. Estonia-based Starship Technologies has been using its tiny robots around the world for more than half a decade, with the American startup working first on college campuses and then heading to small towns with service, in most places welcoming small, rushing robots. The company emphasized that the robots use carbon-free electricity and do not need a driver in the short term – they travel at a speed of about 6 km / h.

A robot chef named Flippy, designed to cook 300 burgers a day, has been upgraded and can now also fill up baskets of fries and place them in the deep fat fryer. Built by Miso Robotics, a food services startup from Pasadena, California, it is now capable of working an entire fry station and can do twice as many food preparation jobs as the first Flippy, including basket filling, emptying, and returning. White Castle has partnered with Miso on the Flippy project, giving feedback that has allowed the startup to improve the functionality of the product. They deployed the original Flippy to a location in the Chicagoland area in September 2020. Automatic Dispenser for high volume foods: New Automatic Dispenser options make Flippy 2 autonomous.

A distant future involving robotic package deliveries is now very much a reality. Advances in robotics, GPS tracking, automation, and navigation now mean you might not find a delivery person at your door with your package. You might find a delivery robot instead. With semi-autonomous robots beginning to enter the world, here's a look at how delivery robots work. A delivery robot is an automated robot that brings your delivery directly to your door.

In a restaurant landscape where lean profit margins are getting even slimmer due to the necessary COVID-19 safety measures of distancing, staying afloat is an increasingly difficult challenge. Small wonder, then, that some operators are using whatever means they can to stand out from their competition. Robot waiters, although not a new phenomenon, are making headlines around the world again, but this time with a socially distanced twist. At Claypot Rice, a Chinese restaurant in Calgary, robot greeters and servers chat with guests, take orders and run food from the kitchen. These are typically three distinct roles performed by humans, a fact not lost on owner Alex Guo.

A fleet of 40 autonomous robots has been deployed on Arizona State University's Tempe campus, making it the latest institution to implement robot food-delivery from Starship Technologies, according to a university release. ASU's food-service provider, Aramark, has partnered with the delivery robot's creator, Starship, to provide the nearly four dozen robots that will serve ASU's on-campus community. According to the release, the robots will retrieve food and drinks from "on-campus retailers to be delivered anywhere on campus, within minutes." Starship is already providing the food-delivery services to over 10 campuses across the country. The robots rolled out to Northern Arizona University's campus in 2019.