Your Next Airport Meal May Be Delivered By Robot

Robot delivery has long been touted as a game-changing technology of the future. However, it still hasn’t cracked the big time. Drones still aren’t airdropping packages into our gutters by accident, nor are our pizzas brought to us via self-driving cars.

That’s not to say that able minds aren’t working on the problem. In one case, a group of engineers are working ton a robot that will handle the crucial duty of delivering food to hungry flyers at the airport.

Eating at the airport can be a bit of a crapshoot. Seating is usually limited, with thousands upon thousands of people passing through in any given day. Even if you get to the airport early, you might struggle to find somewhere to sit down and eat. Get there late, or get a bad security line, and you might not have time to order food before you need to walk to your gate. Airports are typically large, sprawling complexes, and the food outlet you desire may be on the opposite side of the building to where you’re boarding your plane.

Robot delivery could potentially solve these issues by delivering food directly to passengers at the gate. It’s this problem that robotics startup Ottonomy set out to solve, working in partnership with Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport.

In the cluttered, indoor environment of an airport, GPS and other satellite constellations simply aren’t usable for navigation. Instead, Ottonomy’s Ottobot relies on lidar, cameras, and ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles and find its way around the environment. The company created proprietary software for mapping indoor environments, in order to give its robots the necessary 3D map to get around their workspace.

Airports can get incredibly crowded, and early on, the team found that navigation in these situations was difficult. This led to the Ottobot’s current configuration, in which every wheel is motorized and capable of steering. This lets the robot crab sideways, execute a zero-radius turn, or tightly swerve around corners, both of which are useful to get around tight spaces. The drivetrain was inspired by electric wheelchairs. Just like an electric wheelchair, the Ottobot needs a tight turning circle and the ability to deal with lumps, bumps and kerbs, at times.

Several compartments on the bot are used to store various items a customer might order. As is becoming common in food delivery, this would allow the necessary separation of cold drinks and hot food, for example. The Ottobot is also capable of raising and lowering its ride height. It might seem like a curious feature, but it helps the robot serve a greater range of customers. The robot can lower itself down to allow a child to pickup an order, or raise itself to help a customer that can’t easily bend over. Notably, the company has kept the cabin design modular so that it can be customized by end-users to suit different delivery roles.

As with most any autonomous system humans have ever built, there’s always a risk that things will go wrong. In the event that an Ottobot can’t figure out where it is or where it’s going, staff can take over control to get the robot out of trouble. This feature is particularly useful if the robot finds itself in an unexpected situation. The robots also feature a “How Am I Driving?” sticker on the back, that invites feedback on the robots performance.

The order process relies on an app called Crave. Customers can scan a QR code at their gate or at the restaurant location itself, and then place an order through the app. Rather than putting in their home address, the customer then provides their desired delivery location in the airport, such as their gate number. When the food is ready, it’s loaded into the robot by the restaurant, and then the robot heads off to find the customer. According to Ottonomy, deliveries can be as quick as 10 minutes for orders of retail snacks, or 20 to 25 minutes for those that are freshly prepared by a restaurant.

The robots are being rolled out to several locations for testing, with a pilot program at Rome Airport among various future deployments. The robots were also recently tested at Pittsburgh International Airport, with passengers offered a free drink for helping to trial the system.

Ottonomy obviously isn’t the only company in the robot delivery space. Other notable competitors we’ve seen before include Neubility, LG, and Baemin. It’s interesting to note that many of these companies have converged on similar designs. These robots typically feature the same kinds of sensor packages, drive systems, and overall layouts. The vast majority resemble a cooler on wheels that’s designed to be highly maneuverable and handle regular urban terrain. When your rivals have come up with similar solutions, it can be a sign that you’re on the right track.

Overall, airport food delivery seems like an achievable challenge for robotics startups to solve. In relatively-controlled spaces like airports, the risks are low. With the right packaging choices, the smell from potent curries shouldn’t pollute another customer’s salad. An integrated system for customers to report problems should allow any messy robots to be readily sent back for cleaning in the event of spills, too.

A slow robot with enough sensors not to run over people shouldn’t have too much trouble delivering some food from point A to point B. Perhaps the most likely problem is that the robots will be unable to handle navigating around an airport when passenger volumes are highest. Heavy foot traffic would slow deliveries in these conditions, which would also be when demand is highest. And of course, the time to get back from point B to point A also has to be factored in to every delivery.

At the extremes, if the robots become completely unable to move, they could become frustrating roadblocks for passengers in a hurry. Stress testing a robot delivery system would be ideal, but it’s hard to imagine any artificial test measuring up to the sheer havoc and chaos of Thanksgiving weekend at LAX.

In any case, it seems likely that robot delivery will gradually become more common as the technology matures and kinks are worked out. Get familiar with your robot delivery pals, and be friendly, lest they shake up your soda by using their lidar to find a particularly rough bit of pavement just to spite you!

New M&A Rejuvenates Robotics Sector in Medtech

Alphatec, a company focused on solutions for the spine, is making an acquisition that will bring even more excitement to the highly charged robotics segment of medtech. Last week, the Carlsbad, CA-based company announced it was acquiring the Robotic-Enabled Minimally Invasive (Remi) Robotic Navigation System for $55 million from Accelus.

REMI is an intra-operative platform developed by spine experts with deep navigation and robotics know-how that integrates navigation and robotics into spine procedures utilizing either a 3D imaging scan or 2D fluoroscopic images of the patient. REMI’s small, table-mounted navigation system guides instrumentation and implants to a precise destination during surgery. 

The incorporation of REMI into ATEC’s procedural strategy will improve surgical predictability, reduce radiation exposure and enhance intra-operative precision.

“Alphatec’s intention is to further clinical distinction by integrating actionable information into [its] procedural workflow,” said Pat Miles, chairman and CEO of Alphatec. “With our SafeOp and EOS systems, we have demonstrated prowess in identifying informational technologies and know-how that can integrate information into spine surgery’s procedural workflow. We are excited to add the Fusion Robotics platform’s navigation and robotic precision capabilities to ATEC’s intra-operative informational ecosystem and advance our commitment to control clinical variables in the operating room.”

David Saxon, a senior analyst with Needham & Company, noted the deal wasn’t out of the left field.

“The acquisition of a navigation system isn't surprising as management highlighted it as an attractive area earlier [last] week at Needham's Healthcare Conference,” Saxon wrote in a research note.

Saxon added, “While the REMI system is cleared, management does not expect it to begin to generate revenue until 2025.”

The news of the deal comes as Intuitive Surgical reported it saw a rise in procedures for its da vinci surgical robotics solution that are close to rivaling numbers put up pre-pandemic.

“Global procedure growth in Q1 of 26% came in well above our expectations, with notable strength in the U.S. where procedures also grew by 26%,” Jamie Samath, Intuitive CFO said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript from Intuitive Surgical’s most recent earnings call.

Samath added, “As a reminder, procedures in Q1 of last year reflected an adverse impact from COVID in the early part of the quarter in the U.S. and the latter part of the quarter in Korea and China. We believe that the return of patients to normalized healthcare routines, including diagnostics and improved staffing levels have positively impacted this quarter's procedures.

Average system utilization grew 13% year-over-year, significantly above long-term trends driven by notable strength in procedure volumes in January and February, and by an increasing mix of shorter-duration benign procedures in the U.S.

The surgical robotics market isn’t immune to what’s happening in the economy. Last month Johnson & Johnson made additional layoffs – with some of the positions coming from its surgical robotics units.

It was revealed the New Brunswick, NJ-based company’s Auris Health Unit, a business it acquired in 2019 for $3.4 billion, was cutting 292 positions. It was also revealed Verb Surgical, another robotics unit under J&J’s umbrella, would lay off around 47 people.

And earlier this year, Vicarious Surgical, a company developing a surgical robotics system that combines human-like mechanical arms with virtual reality technology, cut about 14% of its staff.

NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath.

As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and engineers are nearing completion of their Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) prototype. The 16-foot-long, 200-pound snakelike bot is capable of traversing both ground and watery environments via “first-of-a-kind rotating propulsion units,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These repeating units could act as tracks, gripping mechanisms, and underwater propellers, depending on the surrounding environment’s need. The “head” of EELS also includes 3D mapping technology alongside real-time video recording and transmission capabilities to document its extraplanetary adventure.

[Related: Saturn’s rings have been slowly heating up its atmosphere.]

In theory, EELS would traverse the surface of Enceladus towards one of the moon’s many “plume vents,” which it could then enter to use as a passageway towards its oceanic source. Over 100 of these vents were discovered at Enceladus’ southern pole by the Cassini space probe during its tenure around Saturn. Scientists have since determined the fissures emitted water vapor into space that contained amino acids, which are considered pivotal in the creation of lifeforms.

To assess its maneuverability, NASA researchers have already taken EELS out for test drives in environments such as an ice skating rink in Pasadena, CA, and even an excursion to Athabasca Glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park. Should all go as planned, the team hopes to present a finalized concept by fall 2024. But be prepared to wait a while to see it in action on Enceladus—EELS’ journey to the mysterious moon would reportedly take roughly 12 years. Even if it never makes it there, however, the robotic prototype could prove extremely useful closer to Earth, and even on it. According to the Jet Propulsion Lab, EELS could show promise exploring the polar caps of Mars, or even ice sheet crevasses here on Earth.

[Related: Saturn has a slushy core and rings that wiggle.]

Enceladus’ fascinating environment was first unveiled thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini space probe. Launched in 1997, the satellite began transmitting data and images of the planet and its moons back to Earth after arriving following a 7 year voyage. After 13 years of service, a decommissioned Cassini descended towards Saturn, where it was vaporized within the upper atmosphere’s high pressure and temperature. Although NASA could have left Cassini to cruise sans trajectory once its fuel ran out, they opted for the controlled demolition due to the slim possibility of crashing into Enceladus or Titan, which might have disrupted the potential life ecosystems scientists hope to one day discover.