Design and Development of an Autonomous Cafeteria Robot for Food Delivery using RFID-Based Order Verification

The rapid expansion of the foodservice robotics market, valued at USD 2.4 billion in 2024 and projected to reach USD 7.3 billion by 2030, has created significant opportunities for automation ininstitutionaldiningenvironments. Ourprojectaddressesthecriticalneedforautonomousfood delivery systems in cafeterias through the development of a sophisticated robot that combines precisenavigation, secureauthentication,andreliablemechanicaldesign.Thesystemachieves remarkable positioning accuracy of ±8.2 cm and maintains a 99.8% authentication success rate while supporting 8 kg payload capacity with over 6 hours of autonomous operation. Our autonomous cafeteria robot integrates differential-drive locomotion with high-precision odometry, encrypted RFID authentication, and a distributed multi-microcontroller architecture. The navigation system employs advanced algorithms including D* Lite-based path replanning capable of sub-30 ms response times, while security is ensured through an AES128/CBC encryptedRFIDprotocolwithrollinginitializationvectors.Therobotsuccessfullycompletedover 200 test delivery cycles with 100% completion rate, demonstrating its readiness for real-world cafeteria deployment