Yandex Self-Driving Group, the autonomous vehicle unit of the Russian tech company Yandex, has partnered with the food delivery service Grubhub to deploy its “Rover” delivery droids on campuses across the US. 

Deployments are set to begin with dozens of robots at selected campuses later this year, aiming to reach more than 250 Grubhub partnering campuses over the course of the partnership. Yandex’s delivery service will be integrated with Grubhub’s app for online ordering.

Analyst QuickTake: Yandex Rover is a six-wheeled delivery robot (very similar to Starship and Kiwibot units) that uses sidewalks to travel. It can carry a payload of up to 44 lbs and navigate a range of bad weather conditions. Since its commercial launch in April 2020, Yandex has expanded its services to deliver fast food and groceries in the Russian cities of Moscow and Innopolis. The company first entered the US market in April this year, launching a trial service for local restaurants in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Starship and Kiwibot (the two leading players in the sidewalk delivery space) have identical strategies, targeting campuses for their services. The proposed scale of Yandex’s operations seems to be much larger (with 250 campuses), given that Starship only operates on around 15 campuses in the US currently.