This week, sidewalk robot delivery startup Starship Technologies celebrated the fifth anniversary of its first campus deployment in the US and, as part of its announcement, gave us a peek into how its fleet has grown over the past half-decade at George Mason University (Mason).
According to Starship, their robots started rolling around Mason on January 22, 2019. Since then, they’ve grown their fleet from its initial 25 robots to 60 and the number of merchants around campus from 4 to 18. According to Starship, the Mason fleet is the world’s largest sidewalk robot delivery fleet.
Here are some of the stats about the Mason deployment sent to The Spoon:
- Nearly 500,000 deliveries have been made.
- The robot fleet has covered over 474,225 miles.
- A single student has made a record 880 orders.
- The most popular menu item has been The Original Double ‘N Fries from Steak’ n Shake, ordered 15,779 times.
It’s all interesting and impressive in some respects, but I have to admit the stat I am most curious about is the student who’s ordered using the company’s sidewalk robot 880(!) times. I’m unsure if Starship has a loyalty program, but that’s essentially the sidewalk robot equivalent of the airline million-mile club.
According to the company, since it was first deployed at Mason, the Starship fleet saw its service grow from 25,000 deliveries and 150,000 miles traveled in 2019 to over 2,000 robots, 5 million deliveries completed, and over 7 million fleet delivery miles traveled.
That it’s a university setting where Starship has racked up the most miles and has grown its fleet to its largest single deployment makes lots of sense; not only are university campuses optimized for foot traffic and have relatively predictable delivery destinations (dorms, and student halls), but they also have built-in and receptive customer populations who frequent the same locations.
