When you can’t go to the restaurant, bring the restaurant to you. That’s the concept behind a tiny new robot with wheels that’s been introduced at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. 

All travellers will be familiar with the eternal airport dilemma: to arrive at the gate on-time, or to savour a bite from one of the delish restaurants on offer (and deal with a potentially long wait in line). Now, you don’t have to choose. 

‘OrderSEA’ is a mobile food ordering service that allows travellers to order pick up meals from 16 of the airport’s restaurants when they’re a little pressed for time. 

The service allows you to order food from your phone or mobile device, as well as finding out how long the wait time for each restaurant is.

Related story: Adorable video of Qantas flight attendant’s happy dance goes viral

Part of the OrderSEA service is gate food delivery, which is done by a special OrderSEA robot named Gita. 

Gita, a small bot on wheels, can store up to 18kgs in food, and deliver it all around the airport terminal, for the very reasonable fee of $2.99 US. 

At this stage, the robot has a human escort to accompany it around the airport, The Seattle Times has reported that the service could be increased to a full fleet of Gita robots, if demand is high. 

While the service is currently not available at Australian airports, it’s definitely something that we hope local transit hubs will consider. If not only for convenience, then perhaps as a way to make airport social distancing a little easier. We’ll be waiting with bated breath and rumbling bellies. 

Related story: The real reason you have to switch to ‘Airplane Mode’ during a flight