• Yandex Self-Driving Group, the autonomous vehicle unit of the Russian tech company Yandex, has announced plans to deploy its “Rover” delivery droids at the Ohio State University in collaboration with food delivery company Grubhub. 

<ul><li>This marks the first university deployment of the Yandex-GrubHub partnership announced last month to rollout autonomous deliveries at 250 GrubHub partnering campuses across the US.</ul>

• Yandex will deploy a fleet of 50 droids at the university starting later this month, with plans to scale operations to include 100 units in the future. The droids will bring food from on-campus dining locations ordered via the GrubHub app at a delivery fee of USD 2.5 (charged by GrubHub). The robots will make deliveries to pre-set locations on-campus, including residence halls.

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: Yandex Rover is a six-wheeled delivery robot that travels on sidewalks, very similar to that of peers, Starship and Kiwibot. Although Starship and Kiwibot currently have more campus deployments, they do not have large-scale partnerships for future deployments such as the Yandex-GrubHub one. Starship currently operates at more than 20 universities, including the recently announced deployment at the University of Nevada-Reno, while Kiwibot serves around five universities including New Mexico State University, announced earlier this month. </ul>