PORTLAND, Maine — Half-a-dozen people stood in an old-fashioned line at the Hungry Huskies food truck outside Luther Bonney Hall on the University of Southern Maine campus at lunchtime on Wednesday.
Behind them, two small robots, resembling colorful kitchen cabinets on wheels, whizzed around the paved walkways drumming up business for a futuristic new campus food delivery service.
The bot’s forward-facing digital displays mimicked friendly faces, with blinking eyes morphing into hearts and stars. One of the mechanical critters approached a student sitting on a stone wall, broadcasting friendly, and slightly plaintive, cooing sounds.
“Hi baby,” the student purred back at the machine, taking a picture of the QR code on its roof with her phone.
The code led to a downloadable app that allows students and staff to order food from one of five lunch kiosks and have the robots deliver it to any building on campus. The Kiwibots, as they are called, are a joint venture between the university’s food vendor, Sodexo, and the Colombian tech company that invented the devices.
The service, which costs the university nothing but does charge users delivery fees, began at USM three weeks ago. It’s already operating at dozens of campuses across the country, including at Tulane, Gonzaga and Marquette universities.
“We’re still doing a lot of onboarding with students,” said Isabella Shool, who works for the Kiwibot’s parent company and was giving away promotional swag nearby.
The machines’ name refers to the fruit, not the bird, from New Zealand.
Folks wishing to get their lunches delivered can pay a per-delivery fee of a few bucks or sign up for a semester-long subscription, giving them a set number of deliveries.
The silver plan costs $40 and is good for 15 deliveries, the $100 gold plan gets you 40 and the platinum version is 70 Kiwibot visits for $150.
Delivery fees are on top of the price of the food. Unused deliveries cannot be carried over into the next semester, Shool said.
Brigid Magee-Skinner sat studying at a picnic table in Portland on Wednesday while the Kiwibots circled the area, looking for takers. Magee-Skinner said she was aware of them but had no plans to use the service.
“They’re really expensive,” she said.
Shool said the bots were only making one to three deliveries a day on the Portland campus at this point. At the Gorham campus, where the university’s student dorms are located, business is a little better. There, the Kiwibots are making six to 10 deliveries a day, she said.
A semi-autonomous, food-delivering robot speeds along a footpath, loaded with an order of spicy tuna sushi, on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus at lunchtime on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022; A semi-autonomous food delivery vehicle known as a Kiwibot zooms by Brigid Magee-Skinner (left) and Nathan Hart as they study outside of Luther Bonney Hall on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. Kiwibots can deliver food to students and staff all over campus. Credit: Troy R. Bennett / BDN
“The goal is to be making 20 to 30 deliveries a day by the end of the semester,” Shool said.
Olivia Welch-Blackwell, who is double majoring in liberal studies and women and gender studies, watched two Kiwibots — one pink and one blue — circle the Portland campus on Wednesday. Welch-Blackwell said she knew what they were but hadn’t used one.
“No, not yet,” she said, “but they’re so cute. One got stuck inside, and I had to open the door for it.”
Technically, they’re not designed to go inside. The Kiwibots cannot open doors, go up stairs or push buttons in an elevator. They’re designed to deliver to a building’s front door only.
They can, however, navigate sidewalks and deliver to any of USM’s many off-campus offices in the neighborhood. The Kiwibots can even make it through a nearby five-way roundabout unscathed.
The Kiwibots have no drivers, operating largely on their own.
The bots receive orders via the app and an internal phone SIM card, then proceed to a campus food kiosk — which includes the Hungry Huskies food truck — where a Sodexo employee loads them up with vittles. The machines then trundle on to their destination using GPS mapping software to guide them. Stopping outside their destination building, folks who’ve ordered food then use the app to open the Kiwibot and retrieve their lunch.
The bots are expected to be in use all winter having already been tested at other snowy universities in the past.
Nobody placed an order at lunchtime in Portland on Wednesday, but student Fabio Caciel-Reyes agreed to help Shool test one of the Kiwibots, receiving free spicy tuna sushi in return.
Caciel-Reyes was impressed as the bot’s lid slowly opened, revealing its fishy contents.
“I’m definitely leaning toward using it,” he said. “It’s the future.”
