Video: See Ottonomy's Robots Roam CVG Airport

Promotional video shows the autonomous bots in action

Listen, I know that the video above is a big commercial for Ottonomy. It was sent to me by the company’s CEO, so you know it will paint Ottonomy in a good light.

Having said that, I’m posting it here because unless you live in specific cities in California, Texas or Florida, or go to one of roughly 30 colleges that have robot delivery — you don’t really get to see delivery robots in action.

In addition to actually watching sidewalk robots work, this video goes one step further and shows you a sidewalk robot working inside an airport. Ottonomy has been making deliveries inside Terminal B at CVG airport since last year. Passengers order food and goods from participating retailers via a mobile web app and designate which gate they are flying out of. The order is loaded into the robot, which drives itself to the customer, who uses their mobile phone to open the robot and retrieve their food.

Again, this video is a little flashy for posting on a news site like this — but it does show how airports are innovating with robots and gives you a glimpse of how a robot can navigate the heavy foot traffic of an airport terminal.

Airports are a hot market for food automation. Airports work around the clock and are filled with people who want decent (not necessarily amazing) food quickly. We’re seeing delivery robots like Ottonomy’s, as well as airport adoption of high-end vending machines like Yo-Kai Express, and cashierless checkout solutions like Zippin. And thanks to the ongoing pandemic, concerns over person-to-person contact remain, and labor issues continue to put pressure on retailers. So we’ll be seeing more automation in more aiports over the coming years.

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