HEBRON, Ky. — The robots are coming to CVG, and they're bringing food.
CVG's "Ottobots," named so after the name of the California-based company that created them, Ottonomy, will now be offering more than just snacks.
Though the bots launched in 2021 in Concourse B, where they brought hungry passengers snacks, bottled drinks and other travel necessities, now they have the ability to deliver sandwiches from Subway.
Right now, there are two Ottobots and they're fully otto-nomous.
Their mission is to deliver food to passengers' gates in Concourse A, so guests can sit comfortable while they wait for their flight and avoid the harrowing task of gathering all their bags, belongings and offspring before embarking on a journey to rustle up some food before the literal journey of boarding an airplane.
The technology is also aimed at helping travelers with accessibility needs and the robots are ADA-accessible, according to CVG.
To order something and have it delivered via Ottobot, passengers can craft their order online through CVG's website, or scan the QR code on one of the robots themselves. Once an order is submitted, each passenger will get a unique QR code.
From there, staff at CVG's Subway location will put together the order and place the food inside a secure cabin within the robot.
Ottobot will then drive itself from the restaurant to the passenger's location, upon which it will only open to serve its tasty cargo to the passenger with the correct QR code for the order.
According to the airport, CVG was the first airport to develop and deploy autonomous food and merchandise delivery robots.
It's not the first time CVG has turned to robots to help with airport operations. During the holiday season in 2020, when COVID-19 cases were spiking amid holiday travel, CVG turned to Gita.
Gita helped to make navigating CVG as contactless as possible during the pandemic. It was designed to, with the push of a button, follow staff through the airport as they assisted travelers or handed out supplies.
In addition to Gita, CVG leaned on Avidbots to autonomously scrub airport floors more efficiently, allowing employees to instead spend their time disinfecting surfaces.
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