Pepsi Is Testing a Snack Delivery Robot On Select College Campuses (hothardware.com) 80
MojoKid writes: College students used to have to fend for themselves at the campus convenient store but soon may have the snacks coming to them courtesy of a new delivery service. The PepsiCo Hello Goodness Snackbot, an autonomous delivery robot, will now run snacks around select college campuses to satiate whatever case of the munchies it can. Students, staff, and faculty at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California can now order snacks between 9AM and 5PM through the Snackbot app, which is currently only available on iOS. The robot will deliver goods at 50 designated Snackbot areas across campuses. The delivery bot can go more than 20 miles on a single charge and includes a camera, headlights, and all-wheel drive to help it navigate through tough terrain if need be. The Snackbots are part of the company's goal of expanding the reach of their healthier product lines to 50,000 points of presence by the end of 2019.
What am I missing here? (Score:4, Informative)
If they want a snack, don't students just reach for their selection of snacks that they've previously purchased and stored?
Because I suspect that the snacks delivered by a robot are not likely to be as cheap as snacks purchased on a shopping trip at the cheap place down the road a bit...
And when I was a student, money was important as I didn't have any!
so... what am I missing here?
Are modern students so flush with cash and so poor with planning that they find it easier to order snacks when they're feeling peckish?
Re: What am I missing here? (Score:3)
Youâ(TM)re not missing anything except the fact that students didnâ(TM)t ask for this service. Itâ(TM)s being pushed by Pepsi (as an experiment and/or publicity stunt), not demanded by anyone. Most likely it will go away after the experiment yields the likely results (ie that itâ(TM)s easier to just bring snacks with you than summon a robot)
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Why can't slashdot support modern character encoding? Is it some because they're stupid or lazy?
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Most likely it will go away after the experiment yields the likely results (ie that itâ(TM)s easier to just bring snacks with you than summon a robot)
Ad well, the life expectancy of the robot is nil. Between drunk kids having fun and nerds using the robots as parts sources - this isn't going to end well.
The poor robots - kidnapped and forced to fight like gladiators in duels to the death.
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A) That generalizing from your singular experience is generally a bad idea.
B) Not all college students are good planners, nor are all college students poor.
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C) Some college students make poor financial decisions especially when they have the munchies.
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I recall when I was a Student my dorm as most academic halls had these things that have been around forever, called coin-operated machines.
Times are changing. Some high schools and Universities are forcing vending machines to stock unpopular healthy foods in them, resulting in lower sales.
This would be the perfect workaround for those locations. In addition to that, they could probably skip giving the school a cut of their profit since they wouldn't be renting their space anymore.
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They're probably testing how it will be abused. It has cameras, why wouldn't you try to cover the cameras? The lid opens, why wouldn't you grab all of the inventory or take a dump in it? It has wheels, why not lift it off the ground so it can't escape? It has a wireless internet connection, why not subvert the signal?
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Some of the responses to my response are ... worrying!!
Re:What am I missing here? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
And probably a LOT more theft . . .
Possibly because the USA doesn't have Tim Tams, I understand?
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Had to insert this Judge Dredd clip here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I do like Dredd.
Been reading about Megacity One since... well, before my friends/siblings kids (some now adult & breeding) were born.
I like all the movies, too, they've captured, fairly well and certainly better than I expected, some of the aspects that make Dredd Dredd.
So, when will it get hacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
This *IS* a robot, and it has a simplified set of parameters for thinking it has been paid...
And these ARE college kids, who are notoriously both 1) Broke as shit, and 2) Have more time than sense, and-- presumably 3) Desire snack food.
If they push this thing in a college with a healthy CompSci department, how long do you think it would take for there to be an impromptu hack-a-thon on this thing?
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So what you're saying is that Android is cheap crap for the homeless.
Alternate Goal (Score:2)
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Not really. People made plenty of profts paying a much higher margin for physical retail distribution. Software companies a couple decades ago would have killed to only have to pay 30% from gross.
Vending Machine? (Score:3, Insightful)
The robot will deliver goods at 50 designated Snackbot areas across campuses.
How is this better than the dozens of vending machines already all over campus? If it's not going to actually bring me my junk food, how is it an improvement? The difference is that with the bot I have to pick what I want in the app, go to the designated location, and then wait for the bot to show up with my order.
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Re:Vending Machine? (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps the snackbots could be programmed to dangle the snacks just out of their reach, and then take them on a run around campus until the sugar content of the snack has been worked off.
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They're selling chips, not carrots.
between 9AM and 5PM (Score:2)
Clearly, they have no idea about when people want snacks.
I'd like to order a 2 liter diet coke please SnackBot.
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I misread TFS as saying "9 PM to 5 AM". Thanks for pointing that out to me.
(They could have said "0900 to 1700" like most of the rest of the world does. But that—like remembering that 0 C is freezing and 100 C is boiling—is just too hard for some people.)
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9PM to 5PM would be 21:00 to 05:00 but apart from that I agree. A smal nit pic 0C to 100C is only valid for water when the atmosphere around it is at a pressure of 101.325 kPa at ote presures the poilingpoint can vary quit a bit but I'm going ot here sorry about that. Hiovever i agtree that celsius makes quite a lot more sence than Farenheit ad it allso makes converting to kelvin used in most calculations a lot easier
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"Pepsi OK?"
Sure, as long as this cryptocurrency I just invented is OK.
Just like those scooters (Score:2)
I predict this robot will be abused heavily by drunk college students.
Sorry corporations, robots will be vandalized and disabled before you think you can replace humans with machines.
Same goes for automated cars and trucks. You think the teamsters are going to let self driving trucks take over their jobs in the future? They'll be out in BFE destroying these things. And trust me, the state police aren't going to rush to the aide of an unmanned vehicle in anytime to catch the crooks.
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No kidding. College campuses have pranksters galore. I should know; I pulled a couple back in my day.
In America... (Score:2)
...calories chase you!
Having solved all of humanitys' problems.. (Score:3)
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Ricky, have you been sniffing your own farts again? You honestly believe that aliens shun us because we build a robot that delivers snacks to college students? This makes no sense on any level.
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He's offering an example, not positing a root cause. Have you been drinking again?
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Come to think of it last night I was a little buzzed.
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Who wants to talk to meat?
http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
Just what we need (Score:3)
The world is fighting unhealthy eating habits and obesity epidemics. Meanwhile Pepsi is working hard to find new ways to sneak addictive empty calories into your body.
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Food is not addictive. Nobody is forcing people to overeat. If you're fat as an adult with education on kcal, its your fault, not the food companies.
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"Food is not addictive."
Food can be very habit forming.
"Nobody is forcing people to overeat."
A lot of people, from parents to corporations, are insisting people over eat.
"If you're fat as an adult with education on kcal, its your fault, not the food companies."
Fault isn't always an either or. Especially in social species.
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Food can be very habit forming.
Glad we agree its not addictive.
A lot of people, from parents to corporations, are insisting people over eat.
Overfeeding should be considered child abuse and corporations wanting you to keep buying their food is an incredibly poor excuse.
Fault isn't always an either or. Especially in social species.
No, in this case, if people are well educated they understand exactly what happens. If you consume past your TDEE, the excess kcal is stored as fat. There is no argument here, that situation is fixed. You overeat it, you wear it.
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Glad we agree its not addictive
I don't think word choice matters very much in the OPs point, be it addiction, habit forming, dependence, cravings, or psychological addiction, but there still is reasonable support for the involvement of a biological mechanism:
https://www.princeton.edu/news... [princeton.edu]
https://pr.princeton.edu/news/... [princeton.edu]
Overfeeding should be considered child abuse and corporations wanting you to keep buying their food is an incredibly poor excuse.
Possibly but still a lot of people, from parents to corporations, are encouraging people to over eat.
No, in this case, if people are well educated they understand exactly what happens. If you consume past your TDEE, the excess kcal is stored as fat. There is no argument here, that situation is fixed. You overeat it, you wear it.
I'm not sure what you mean by well educated or what the percentage of the population you think that represents, or i
I'm curious (Score:3)
If someone see one of these, check something for me? Turn it over and look underneath to see if it's made by "Buy-N-Large" corporation.
Thanks.
9-5? (Score:2)
Between 9am and 5pm, really? That's when college students are up and around campus anyway (OK not all of them by 9 but you get the idea). This service might actually see some use if it operated between 7pm and 3am. Why only run a robot during the day? Is it going back to home base where a tech checks on it regularly or something?
Also from the story:
Matt Camino, Director of e-Commerce at University of the Pacific, remarked, "This innovative technology from PepsiCo is enhancing campus life for our student
Black Mirror episode? (Score:2)
Is this reality, or Black Mirror episode?
I keep getting them confused.