Julia Picard

Five years ago, robotics company Starship rolled out 20 food delivery robots at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Today, close to 80 of the bots do 1,000 deliveries a day.

They look like motorized storage bins on six wheels with a bright orange flag sticking out of the top, making them easy to spot on campus.

I'm on the trail of one of them.

Where some students might have once delivered for DoorDash and Grubhub, they now work as attendants and technicians for the robot fleet.

Scott McCurdy was studying business management at Northern Arizona University when his roommate told him about Starship.

The opportunity proved to be so valuable, it changed the entire course of his education.

McCurdy, a self-avowed hands-on learner, left college after sophomore year to join Starship.

Starship and other robotics companies like Robot.com and Austin-based AVRide are quietly turning campuses into real-world training grounds.

According to Starship, about two-thirds of its student hires are pursuing engineering or computer science degrees.

Jacob Olson is one of them.

The nuclear engineering student says his experience working hands-on as a fleet attendant gave him insight for his work with a professor studying robots to detect radiation.

Five years ago, Starship product engineer Marcus Hall was majoring in computer and electrical engineering at Oregon State.

He was designing an autonomous delivery platform when COVID hit.

While classes were paused, Hall noticed a robot technician job for Starship on campus.

Hall got the job and quickly found that even though class had taught him design principles, he was now seeing how they are stress tested in the real world.

Oregon State robotics professor Ross Hatton says the more hands-on time engineering students get with robots, the better.

But he cautions that learning how an existing robot operates isn't the same as having the knowledge to build one yourself.

Hatton says that the base layer of learning for students who might one day build their own robots is still tinkering in labs, robotics clubs, and internships.

Still, he finds it beneficial for students to witness a viable robotics company in action.