Delivery robots help Ann Arbor restaurants weather COVID crisis

Until the robots roll up, Korean eatery Miss Kim looks like any other COVID-stilled storefront in downtown Ann Arbor, with chairs upended on tables and hastily scrawled signs papering the windows. Inside, chef and managing partner Ji Hye Kim, a University of Michigan alum, cooks takeout orders. While the restaurant does a brisk carryout business, Kim says she brings in less than half the revenue she did before the pandemic closed the dining room. Business is booming, however, for the trickle of three-wheeled, autonomous REV-1 delivery robots that silently park themselves at Miss Kim's curb, ready to be loaded with food before they wheel away to preprogrammed destinations. Refraction AI, a U-M startup that began delivering food in late 2019, says its pilot deployment of eight robots is doing four times as many runs since the crisis began. "We had no idea how important they would become as restaurants struggle to get through the crisis and we all work to minimize person-to-person contact,” said Matthew Johnson-Roberson, co-founder of Refraction AI and a U-M associate professor of naval architecture and engineering. Refraction AI was co-founded late last year by Johnson-Roberson and mechanical engineering assistant professor Ramanarayan Vasudevan, with the help of U-M's Office of Technology Transfer.