13
April
2022
|
14:30 PM
America/New_York

Food rovers returning to Ohio State’s Columbus campus

Testing begins this month

New food delivery rovers are returning to serve The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus in two weeks.

Teams from food delivery provider Grubhub and the university’s dining services in the Office of Student Life will begin setting up and testing the new rovers this week. Limited service is expected to return in the next few weeks from Mirror Lake Eatery to Lincoln and Morrill Towers.

The full menu will be available for delivery from Mirror Lake Eatery.  

Not all areas of campus will be included in the delivery zone during this brief test phase at the end of the semester.

“The rovers were very popular on campus when they were operating, validating our prediction that students would appreciate this form of autonomous mobile delivery,” said Zia Ahmed, senior director of Student Life Dining Services. “We are excited about the return of rovers to campus with our same vision to reduce the cost of delivery, reduce the time it takes to deliver food and enhance sustainability.”

Testing in various forms will continue through the summer. Dining Services intends to provide full service in the fall, at the same level or higher than offered earlier this academic year.

The rovers look very similar to the previous ones and use very similar technology.

Grubhub ended the original program over concerns that the original delivery rovers were developed by a Russian-owned company.

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