It stopped before hitting me and patiently charted a new course to get around me. I leapt in front of the vehicle, blocking its path. Once I eventually caught up with the robot, I decided to see how it would deal with a bit of harassment. Low speeds also greatly simplify the computational problems involved in autonomous operation. Touhy says Starship's robots have a top speed of four miles per hour (6.4 km/h), making it less likely to cause damage if it runs into something. Still, that's slower than many other robots on the market. I'm a pretty fast walker, but I couldn't catch my robot at a walking speed-I had to speed up to a jog. This is all to say: Starship's robots travel faster than I expected. Again, I guessed wrong and had to hustle to catch up.) So after I got to Starbucks, I guessed where the robot was going and tried to follow its route in reverse. My robot instead opted to drive to the nearest main road, which almost doubled the travel distance. After all, the most direct route, a seven minute walk, required going up a stairway and going near a construction zone. I hustled back to Starbucks, figuring I'd be OK. But by the time I realized I'd gotten it wrong, my robot was out of sight. I wasn't sure which one was mine and had to guess. I planned to follow my robot back to the delivery point, but the two robots took off simultaneously and in opposite directions-neither of which appeared to be toward my drop-off point. Starship's Touhy says restaurant workers don't know where any particular order is going. A few minutes later, a Wing Zone worker came out and loaded bags into two different robots. Three Starship robots were parked outside the vacant-looking restaurant. The Starship app said my food would arrive in 33 minutes-plenty of time for me to amble over to the Wing Zone and see the loading process first-hand. I set the delivery pin near the coffee shop and ordered a burger and pop from the Wing Zone. I sat at a table outside the Starbucks and opened the Starship app. When I got to the nearly empty George Mason University's campus last month, I launched the Starship app and saw the company was only offering food from two restaurants: Starbucks and the Wing Zone.
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