College Students Are The Guinea Pigs For Robotics Projects! So, What Is Wrong?

College students always get the coolest robots and there is a reason behind AI-power social robots

If your child is starting college in the fall, it may be time to have the conversation. It's fine to experiment, but don't get too attached to the first robot you meet; there will be others. This is because college campuses are quickly emerging as critical early testing grounds for the robotics sector. The most recent example comes from Jamba Juice and Blendid, a provider of robotic food service solutions. The companies will establish autonomous robotic kiosks at UCLA. Jamba, one of Blendid's early partners, sees a big advantage in a college rollout, which is part of an interesting industry-wide trend of using colleges as automation testbeds. Their robotic smoothie kiosks give college campuses across the country a new way to meet students' demand for fresh and nutritious on-the-go food options – where and when they want it. As they are willing to expand to even more colleges and universities.

The unexpected opportunities the pandemic provided for robotic food service providers, emphasizing contactless service. Companies are moving quickly to deploy their robots to capture early market share and limited investor dollars. The food robotics market is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2020 to $4.0 billion by 2026. Robotics and AI advancements, operational cost advantages, and major consumer and retailer shifts are driving the food industry to embrace automation more quickly. A tight labor market and widely publicized worker shortages among restaurant employers hasten the transition. Colleges and universities have emerged as unexpectedly important early adopters. In many ways, colleges are ideal testing grounds for robots. Students typically live within a 30-minute radius of campus, campuses are well-structured, and administrations can approve rollouts that would typically require many layers of bureaucratic wrangling at the municipal level.

Starship Technologies is another company that has robots on the campuses of Arizona State University, Purdue University, George Mason University, and Northern Arizona University. To meet the high demand for the service, all campuses have increased the number of robots, dining options, and operating hours since its launch. Integration with meal plans ensures a ready customer base for the food delivery robot service provider. Campuses also provide excellent proof of concept for a wide range of Starship constituents, from investors to prospective customers to regional regulatory bodies wary of robot delivery.

It's also a two-way street: colleges can market themselves as forward-thinking to current and prospective students. If you get a chance, look through a college pamphlet to see if you can spot any robots. More colleges are likely to join Jamba and Blendid. Colleges have always been a strong market for Jamba and have proven particularly successful with our Jamba by Blendid kiosks as tech-savvy college consumers embrace new robotic solutions.

A few years ago, teachers in one Connecticut elementary school were experiencing difficulties. They were developing an anti-bullying curriculum for third graders, complete with role-playing scenarios, but teachers were hesitant to assign students the roles of victims or bullies. It's not fun for a child to be picked on in front of all of his or her classmates, even if it's only a game. The teachers attempted to play the roles themselves at first, but the students laughed because they couldn't imagine adults in those schoolyard scenarios.

While social robots are still in their early stages of development, they can be powerful tools for tasks ranging from education to patient care and customer service. Timothy Bickmore, a computer science professor at Northeastern University, is developing social robots that can serve as public speaking coaches and provide couples counseling. Social robots are being researched by scientists all over the world for use in treating autism spectrum disorders and depression, providing emotional support for hospitalized children and dementia patients, and assisting with the management of conditions such as diabetes. Another area where researchers see great potential is classroom teaching.

Early studies on the effectiveness of robots have been promising. Personalized educational robots have taught children vocabulary words in both their first and second languages, as well as long division; they can even assist children in developing a growth mindset (the belief that talents can be developed through effort and perseverance). However, there are some aspects of human teaching that robots cannot provide. Furthermore, teachers and ethical researchers have expressed concern that the overuse of robots in education may distract children or impede their social development.