Its objective: Deliver a pizza and drink to a student waiting at a dorm.
6E436 is one of 20 robots recently deployed to deliver food on campus from select school eateries. The university and its food services provider, Sodexo, have partnered with a company called Starship Technologies, which provides the self-driving robots. The company works with some other colleges across the United States, but this is its first partnership in North Carolina.
The knee-high robots use machine learning, artificial intelligence and sensors to navigate the campus. They roll along at a brisk walking pace, but take more time to consider whether to cross a quiet intersection than most humans would.
After climbing the hill and making a left, 6E436 paused before Arthur Headen Drive. Still on the sidewalk, it started to move forward, then paused again, possibly in deference to a slow-moving tow truck coming along, or maybe just wanting to recalibrate how it would navigate the curb cut. After the tow truck passed, 6E436 made its move.
Outside her dorm, freshman Lamiyah Walker awaited the delivery bot.
"Wait, wait! No! It's taking my food!" she called, helpless as 6E436 rolled past her.
All was not lost. Yards away, 6E436 came to a halt and chimed its arrival at its pinned destination. Using an app on her phone, Walker unlocked the robot's container and retrieved her meal.
"I didn't feel like wanting to go get food," she said, explaining why she summoned the bot. "I like it, it's cool."
Joe Burdi, who oversees food services at A&T for Sodexo, said the decision to start using the robots was not caused by a labor shortage. He said students had been asking for the university to start offering delivery and the Starship Technologies partnership offered an opportunity to provide the service while bringing advanced technology to campus.
Right now the robots are delivering from three campus restaurants: Qdoba, 1891 Bistro and the newly opened Paavo's Pizza.
Brian Powell, manager of the A&T Paavo's Pizza location, said he found out about two months ago that he would be working with robots.
"It was really exciting to see the robots on campus," he said. "But I was really nervous about how it would work."
He's been pleasantly surprised, he said, by their intelligence and their speed.
Still, there have been some glitches. They have run into some problems related to networking and communication issues with the robots and with the tablets and cellular device used with them. Turns out there's a bit of a reception dead spot just outside Paavo's.
"It hasn't been anything that has stopped the program massively," he said. It's just been small glitches due to the network, he said.
When 6E436 finished its pizza delivery it returned to Williams Dining Hall to wait outside of Qdoba. Around the other side of Williams, another bot, 6E655 set out from Paavo's carrying another pizza.
Almost immediately, it got snarled in what looked like a traffic jam of four robots. According to a university news release, a team of humans can monitor the robots' progress remotely and take control whenever they want, however, it seemed like the traffic jam robots were trying to figure out the situation for themselves.
Minutes ticked by as the bots tried what looked like halting attempts at problem solving. Eventually, 6E436 broke from the deadlock and left the others behind, traveling across the campus to bring a meal to a security guard.
As 6E436 headed away, it passed near sophomore Mateo Smith.
He said that as an electrical engineering student, he finds the robots especially cool.
"I really like that these are on a Black campus, especially the largest HBCU in the nation," he said. "I just think it's a bit inspiring that we are making a name for ourselves by being modern, having good, reliable modern technology."
©2021 the News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
