One Person Arrested for Food Delivery Robot Bomb Threat at OSU
Oregon State University (OSU) is home to quite a few food delivery robots from Starship Technologies, which ferry meals to hungry students. This week, however, deliveries were halted after a bomb threat, and one person has now been arrested for the hoax.
OSU on Tuesday posted a startling tweet that warned people to stay away from Starship food delivery robots because of possible bombs inside. "Do not open robots. Avoid all robots until further notice," the school said.
The warning came after someone sent a message on social media threatening to place a bomb in one of the robots. OSU isolated delivery bots in a safe location, but no explosives were found.
As AP reports, one person has been arrested, and according to a statement from Starship Technologies, an OSU student is responsible and has "subsequently stated this is a joke." The robots were temporarily taken out of service yesterday, but were expected to be back in action on Tuesday night.
Delivery robots are becoming more common at universities; Starship Technologies robots currently serve over a million students at almost 50 campuses.
At OSU, students use an app to order food, which is loaded into the robot by a food service employee. The robot uses GPS and sensors to navigate to a pre-determined location, at which point the student opens the robot and gets their food. According to KGW8, Starship originally brought 20 robots to OSU in 2020 but the school now has about 75 in its fleet.
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