Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks

https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/12/08/delivery-robots-take-over-chicago-sidewalks-sparking-debate-and-a-petition-to-hit-pause/

by mikhael • 8 months ago

103 173 8 months ago

blockclubchicago.org

ElijahLynn• 8 months ago

Valid points by those concerned with taking over the sidewalks.

I will also say, people riding electric scooters shouldn't be zooming along at 20mph (or pedal bikes) on sidewalks either, which are a true safety hazard.

And on the other side, much better for our environment, to have a lighter weight robot delivering a burrito than a 2,000lb vehicle, in terms of net energy consumption/expenditure.

crote• 8 months ago

Imagine how much better for the environment it'd be if your delivery was brought to you via a human-powered bicycle. Or as an in-between: e-bikes and e-mopeds.

Using 2,000lb vehicles for last-mile burrito delivery is a "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" scenario. Delivery robots are an improvement because literally anything is.

climb_stealth• 8 months ago

God forbid someone would use their own two legs to walk and eat that burrito at the restaurant /s

The extend to which some people get food delivered is absurd. I'm sure there exceptions and reasons and everything, but seriously.

mmooss2• 8 months ago

Why are you comparing them to cars, rather than the (e-)bikes used in most cities?

whyenot• 8 months ago

Why are you assuming that a human would be more efficient and better for the environment than an electrically powered robot? It is very inefficient (approx 25%) to use food as an energy source, and humans are always burning energy. They can't turn off at night or when they are idle. I think it is very likely that the robot would be better for the environment than the person.

alistairSH2• 8 months ago

All the more reason to build separate infrastructure for bicycles and other “in-between” vehicles.

derektank3• 8 months ago

Yeah, depending on the speed of these vehicles, it seems like bike lanes are the appropriate place for them. A smart city could even offer companies an opportunity to fund the buildout of additional bike lanes if there aren’t any existing in the neighborhood in question

SapporoChris• 8 months ago

I look forward to seeing the bot delivery lane.

Mistletoe• 8 months ago

Imagine if the people ordering delivery actually moved their body and went and got the food.

echelon2• 8 months ago

Atlanta has been an early market for both scooters and various food delivery robots. Both have been a boon for the city.

We've had these delivery robots for about six months now, and they've grown to the point where I see hundreds of delivery robots on the sidewalks each week. Scores of them daily. They're flooding our city, making the long commutes people don't want to.

The reason this is great is that Atlanta's infrastructure is car-centric and spread too far apart to make walking or even biking make sense.

The biking infrastructure we have does no good when it rains and you're twenty minutes from your destination. That same infrastructure also doesn't serve our children or our elderly. Or help when you're sick or tired and need a pick me up.

It's easy to order for a group of people from one of these. To imagine the same group of four people hopping on bikes together to travel twenty minutes to food - that's never once happened in my life. Only certain types of people bike, and you'll invariably find yourself in groups with lots of non-cyclists.

I feel that cyclist culture is bright eyed and idealistic, but not practical. You need a city designed around it, and all the people need to grow up loving it. These delivery robots, Waymo, Lime bikes - they're much more sensible middle grounds for cities like ours. Where people can't bike, or simply don't want to.

ipaddr3• 8 months ago

Why don't the delivery people bike and you can stay at home.

smt88• 8 months ago

The economies of scale of a 2,000 lb (electric) vehicle are probably such that they use far less carbon than an individual delivery robot on a per-delivery basis

hyperjeff• 8 months ago

Bikes and scooters aren’t legal on sidewalks in Chicago, and these little robots are just clogging up what little pedestrian space still exists. Totally apart from the questionable ethics of gratuitously using tech for tasks that could be a job for someone.

tptacek• 8 months ago

Wait, the first part I get: the robots are basically motor scooters, don't belong on sidewalks, sure. But the last bit, about "taking tasks that could be a job for someone" --- that's the lamplighter fallacy, isn't it?

HDThoreaun• 8 months ago

As someone who has lived in chicago for 30 years I dont mind telling you that laws are not enforced here. Bikes and scooters not being legal on sidewalks has not stopped a single person from biking and scootering on the sidewalk

mindcandy• 8 months ago

“About half of all food deliveries globally are shorter than 2 and a half miles, which basically means that all of our cities are filled with burrito taxis”

There is a future where a city's burrito taxis are replaced with drones rolling on the sidewalk or flying to the rooftops. And, the large majority of the remaining city drivers are replaced by robotaxis with multi-sensor 360 tracking. Where there are nearly zero parked cars. So, the parking spaces have been replaced with bike lanes of bikers and scooters with every robotaxi on the street planning around their motion.

Far less fuel consumption. Far less street crowding. Far fewer accidents.

And, of course everyone hates the idea.

crooked-v2• 8 months ago

Recently there's been a lot of anger in San Francisco about a Waymo (which have an excellent safety record with humans) killing an outdoor cat who that walked under the car and sat in front of a tire, when not long after someone was killed by a person backing into a crosswalk and it was a barely a blip on the radar.

boh3• 8 months ago

The person who killed the bystander has social/legal/financial ramifications. Google had zero.

Anyone ever ask themselves why they have a knee-jerk impulse to support a billion dollar company's attempt at centralizing transportation?I'm sorry but safety and making your life easier isn't Silicon Valley's main concern.

glitcher• 8 months ago

Pneumatic burrito tubes directly into my home is the future I want.

kiernanmcgowan• 8 months ago

I’m working on a burrito artillery system. It’s the ideal form factor for high velocity chorizo but the delivery tends to make a mess.

slillibri• 8 months ago

I hate it because the last thing we need on sidewalks, at least here in Seattle, is more junk making it impossible to walk anywhere.

CameronBanga• 8 months ago

The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is the solution.

pirates• 8 months ago

Yes in fact I do hate the idea of dozens to hundreds of drones per day flying around my house and neighborhood.

Sabinus2• 8 months ago

There are thousands of vehicles moving around your house and neighbourhood already. The vast majority of them are large enough to kill you, and emit fumes that poison you and the atmosphere.

Cities will have lots of drone deliveries in them in the future. And it'll be more safe and economical than the current situation.

swatcoder• 8 months ago

What do you think the noise is like in your future city? How many cameras and microphones are constantly streaming everything they see and hear into some corporation's private cloud? How many advertisements do we see on our pleasant bike ride? What's it like when a blizzard or flood drives the environment far outside of training norms? Have the debris-collecting drones already been deployed to clean up e-waste when the built-to-be-abandoned delivery drones lose battery or guidance, or is that a V2 thing? Are the police equipped to track down to track down the hacker that overrode my delivery drone?

We used to have books exploring scenarios like this. They were great books, a lot of time, but the most convincing ones didn't paint your future to be a very pretty, peaceful, or equitable one. You might want to read some, at least to understand why some people might be inclined to "hate this idea".

saghm• 8 months ago

How many cameras and microphones are constantly streaming everything they see and hear into some corporation's private cloud?

For what it's worth, the answer for this question for today is already probably fairly high for most large US cities, unfortunately

xnx• 8 months ago

1) "Take over" is slanted language. More accurately "Some residents complain about delivery robots on sidewalks"

2) Remote control delivery carts are much safer and less intrusive than double parked delivery cars (sometimes unlicensed, untagged, and uninsured) or even delivery bikes (riding 20+ mph in the bike line or against traffic on 100+ pound "bikes").

toss1• 8 months ago

True, they are less intrusive than double-parked cars, and maybe vs some bikes, but that does not mean it is still not corporations trying to take private profit from using a public space.

The videos of those particular bots show them taking up a substantial portion of the width of a sidewalk (and definitely the full width in tight spots next to trees & fences) and moving and positioning themselves very clumsily and discourteously. They just sit in the middle occupying something like half the sidewalk width trying to decide what to do next, forcing people to walk to both sides in ~1/4 of the width. These things are not even close to ready for prime-time.

It is rude as a human to just stop in the middle of the sidewalk and unfold your map to figure out where you are going.

Programming in this kind of rudeness is just stupid, and will rightly generate backlash that will not be good for the companies. Of course safety is first, but it'd be more safe and courteous to have it hug one side of the walk. And if you cannot do that safely, not only are you not ready for prime-time, you aren't ready for public Alpha tests.

crooked-v2• 8 months ago

I feel like part of this is people not being comfortable with the idea that they don't have to be deferent to the robots (i.e. do what you want, it will avoid you). That's perfectly understandable (nobody wants to walk in front a moving industrial robots), but is something these companies will have to work on if they want people comfortable around their bots.

delfinom• 8 months ago

Robertson shares Rodriguez’s concerns, pointing to incident reports of the robots pushing neighbors off the sidewalks onto busy streets, colliding with bicyclists and even deterring emergency vehicles.

Sounds like the robots don't do a good job at avoiding

Izkata• 8 months ago

(i.e. do what you want, it will avoid you)

The one I encountered a week ago, when I and another person got near it, it stopped moving. You have to go around them, and there's no way to get them out of the way if they're blocking something aside from leaving and hoping they start moving again.

bombcar8• 8 months ago

Can’t go under it.

Can’t go around it.

Have to go over it!

venusenvy47• 8 months ago

How heavy are they? Can they be lifted by the end and rotated out of the way?

Sabinus2• 8 months ago

That sounds like a behaviour that the company can adjust. Just have it move as far as it can to the side when passing a human.

jeffbee2• 8 months ago

You only have to glance at the photos to see that the thing that has "taken over" is parked cars. The allocation of space is moving cars, parked cars, trees, poles, signs, lights, and then the sidewalk. It is not a fact of geology that the sidewalk is that narrow.

itsdesmond• 8 months ago

I live in a Chicago neighborhood where these are in use. They have very bright lights, actually blinding you as you approach one at night. They move much faster than is appropriate on a sidewalk. They position themselves in the middle of the sidewalk as opposed to the right hand side, impacting traffic in both directions. They round corners at intersections at below-eye-level, I’ve walked into more than one when they appeared in front of me at a corner. They park in the walkway while waiting for customers to retrieve their food. The hey are implemented in a way that demands everyone else gets out of their way. They have not attempted to integrate into the community, they have inserted themselves and we are to figure it out.

I am receptive to the argument that deliveries made in cars are wasteful. I ride a bike exclusively, I am not a fan of delivery drivers jumping out of double parked cars all over town, let alone the environmental impact. But much like rental e-scooters being abandoned on sidewalks, these claim to solve some problem by creating new problems and making the common environment worse principally to create profit for the owners.

And before anyone starts yapping bout NIMBYs: the sidewalk is in the front yard, stupid.

Edit: y’all, no bullshit I wrote this message and then left the house and ran into a Coco branded RC delivery bot at Grand and Ogden, stuck in the snow in the only walkable portion of the sidewalk, unable to get itself out and forcing me to walk around it in the snow. So there’s a little live reporting on the situation in the streets.

I offered no aid.

samlinnfer• 8 months ago

This honestly would be solved quite quickly when the cost of vandalism starts eating into their margins. Once they piss enough people off it becomes self-correcting.

adventured• 8 months ago

There's no scenario where these delivery bots survive US city sidewalks. They will be hijacked, destroyed/attacked, vandalized heavily. The police will not be able to do anything about it. The business model will not survive the US, unless the companies plan to deploy delivery tanks. It'll thrive in safer cities around the world though.

yieldcrv4• 8 months ago

These are solved problems in other cities

All anyone has to do is look across the land

et-al• 8 months ago

Where is this a solved problem? No one likes these things. Seth Rogan reflects the zeitgeist in Platonic.

miltonlost2• 8 months ago

How are these solved problems when robot deliveries on sidewalks are a new phenomenon? Also, what other cities?

CGMthrowaway• 8 months ago

The robots take 3 hours to get there too. Idk why anyone would want this for food at least

enobrev• 8 months ago

I had this exact same experience in ravenswood this weekend. I was walking to breakfast and one of these bots was blocking the entirety of the shoveled part of the sidewalk. I had to make may way into the snow to inch around the bot just so I could continue to use the sidewalk.

I had guessed it was stopped because it came to an unshoveled portion of the sidewalk. If it can't traverse that, it's not made for this city

I'm not fundamentally mad as these bots. But if they don't figure out how to make them work with other pedestrians, then I'm going to start cheering on any vandalism delivered upon them.

HotGarbage• 8 months ago

Shoulda knocked it over to make room. Can't wait for the ADA lawsuits.

phil212• 8 months ago

I had guessed it was stopped because it came to an unshoveled portion of the sidewalk. If it can't traverse that, it's not made for this city

Have them partner with the city and collect evidence of unshoveled sidewalks. Automatically issue fines based off the collected video evidence.

This is one of those things where if these bots cannot traverse a section of sidewalk, many with mobility issues cannot either. And it's endemic to the city.

In my neighborhood there are $5m+ houses that literally never shovel their sidewalk the entire year, as well as a few businesses on "main drag" retail corridors. Fines for this have become exceptionally rare to non existent.

romanows2• 8 months ago

I've seen a few in Lakeview but my experience hasn't been entirely the same as yours. I haven't noticed blinding lights at night. They seem to move relatively slowly and cautiously.

I came upon one as I was jogging last night and was worried about getting around it. It, or someone driving it, seemed to notice me coming and it waited at a spot where it was easy to pass.

That said, these are a bad idea. Like another commenter mentioned, these are going to obstruct people with mobility issues or devices, or obstruct everyone when all but a narrow strip of sidewalk is snow and ice.

trhway3• 8 months ago

stuck in the snow in the only walkable portion of the sidewalk

"Normal" people can walk around at least. How about wheelchair-bound, blind, old/frail for whom walking up down iced/snowy sidewalk edge onto a pavement with moving cars may be an issue, etc. ?

whimsicalism3• 8 months ago

I agree they definitely create a ton of new problems that we will need to figure out, but I think I am simply much much more sympathetic to the fewer drivers argument to the point that I feel like it is still worth doing and figuring out how to fix the details.

exasperaited4• 8 months ago

Well, if there are fewer drivers then there is room for them on the road isn’t there?

Fewer drivers on the road because the pavements are becoming non-navigable because of robots nearly as wide as pavements does not sound like a benefit for anyone but drivers, and yet again demonstrates how messed up car culture is.

floxy2• 8 months ago

How far out are we from bi-pedal delivery robots? It wouldn't need to have AGI, just enough senses to keep from falling over, avoiding pedestrians and traversing minor obstacles. Or maybe a quadruped Boston Dyanmics robot?

foobarian• 8 months ago

The big appeal of humanoid robots to me is that they don't need to be automated; even if they were teleoperated there is a lot of new capability. Operators could rotate in and out more easily in shifts, they could operate where a human would be inappropriate (i.e. imagine a robot maid application where the robot could be activated 24/7, whereas something like a housecleaning service is only able to visit infrequently and during specific times. Or, with the delivery application the operator would be a lot safer than the robot navigating traffic and terrain.).

chasd002• 8 months ago

I offered no aid.

My teens call them “clankers” and are by no means fans of them. I’m surprised those things aren’t constantly stolen or vandalized.

delichon• 8 months ago

I've never seen one but aren't they festooned with cameras, and live streaming?

vorpalhex• 8 months ago

Thank you for sharing.

How do other people you know feel about them?

Do you see them get vandalized or messed with?

superfish• 8 months ago

the sidewalk is in the front yard, stupid.
So there’s a little live reporting on the situation in the streets.
I offered no aid.

I just want to say I find this writing style refreshing as it’s a bit out of distribution for typical HN comments. Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience.

dylan6043• 8 months ago

they have inserted themselves and we are to figure it out.

nitpicking a bit, but this reads as they are the robots doing the inserting instead of the companies creating/operating them and not giving a damn about this.

dangus2• 8 months ago

I don’t know how they’re legal when riding a bicycle on the sidewalk isn’t.

y0eswddl• 8 months ago

waves from Ogden and Chicago

hate those things. I'm ready to start kicking them out the way

miltonlost2• 8 months ago

These are a disability nightmare for folks in wheelchairs and scooters and even canes. They take up 75% of the sidewalk in normal sidewalk widths, let along narrower ones. In the snow, if sidewalks aren't shoveled well, this is even worse, as the traversable area is even narrower. Even being able-bodied it's more annoying than its worth to have to dodge these things.

jeffbee2• 8 months ago

These companies tried to start years ago in Berkeley but people wouldn't tolerate them and they always ended up flipped over in the road. Let it be known that I will not "dodge" something like this under any circumstances. Robots need to get out of the way and stay out of the way.

esafak• 8 months ago

It is going to be an interesting sight when humanoid robots are let loose. They might not be inclined to stay out of your way. Rather the opposite.

i987789• 8 months ago

I had one of these delivery robots run over my foot in Chicago. I was not impressed.

bombcar8• 8 months ago

Glad you weren’t! Having your foot impressed into the sidewalk would have been devastating.

nightshift1• 8 months ago

Is it a felony if I kick that thing off the sidewalk ?

monerozcash5• 8 months ago

In Illinois? If you cause more than $300 in damage, yes.

floundy• 8 months ago

Just turn it upside down then. At best some “Good Samaritan” turns it right side up at some point but the food arrives late, cold, and spilled all over the inside of the robot.

romanows2• 8 months ago

Any idea if there is an argument for moving it if it obstructs sidewalk traffic, whether or not it sustains damage in the process?

I feel like you can't just leave a washing machine blocking the sidewalk unattended and sue anyone who scratches it while moving it? (IANAL)

neom3• 8 months ago

Toronto outright banned a startup I was helping out with in 2021, they ended up packing up and moving it to Miami- Toronto has a rule that the city should not be made more inaccessible to folks with disabilities, and that a delivery robot could potentially cause an accessibility issue on the sidewalk for blind or wheelchair using folks. They didn't reach out to the startup, or tell them about the vote happening at council, they did invite the accessibility advocacy groups in. I agree the startup should have been banned (against my own interests) pending a review, however, I also believe a review of the technology and startup would have left very little room for concern. That said, I'm still skeptical robots on sidewalks are a great idea, ideally they can operate on the roadways.

This issue is going to become an issue with AVs too, if availability is the value prop and number of vehicles creates the availability and there are no humans to drive, I presume we end up with another situation where sidewalks across the world were littered with thousands of those lime/bird scooter things.

https://www.therobotreport.com/toronto-city-council-votes-to...

sleepyguy• 8 months ago

These robots would be a significant improvement over the current electric bike and scooter riders who not only drive recklessly on the roads but also take over the sidewalks. The situation has become lawless in the city, with many delivery drivers disregarding traffic rules entirely, they are a menace to pedestrians and vehicle drivers. I would like the city council to outlaw fast food delivery entirely, accept for the disabled. Young people need to get out more and should pick up their own falafel.

neom3• 8 months ago

If you're referring to Toronto, I couldn't agree more. Couple times a week I find myself confronting an ebike deliverer on the sidewalk and kick him off.

tempest_2• 8 months ago

The thing with those guys, as you have rightly pointed out is for all their problems they do get out of the way and filter through traffic (dangerously as you point out)

A single startup with cooler sized robots tottering down the sidewalk is fine. When every single delivery company gets on board then we have a shit load of those things kicking around and in the way. I have the same issues in cities with those scooters that get left all over the place.

genericuser256• 8 months ago

They are frustrating to be sure, especially the moped versions, but are imo still far better to be around then drivers. I'd much rather the bike lanes to be together and throttled ebikes moved to the road, but it wouldn't make near as much a difference as getting people to not run reds or put down their phones.

vkou• 8 months ago

They didn't reach out to the startup, or tell them about the vote happening at council

It's not the city's responsibility to do that. If your business depends on particular actions by a city's legislature, it's generally on you to be reading their agenda.

pimlottc• 8 months ago

Did the startup reach out to the city before deploying the robots?

neom3• 8 months ago

Yes, and the province, in fact the conversations with the province were used in the meeting (neutrally) that resulted in the ban.

ipaddr3• 8 months ago

In fairness cities are not legally required to sent notices so they won't. They do not really want you to know and fight against the changes. This was a failure of your business leaders. They needed to be more involved following city hall lobbying for their business. Losing a license to operate is a bigger deal then whatever priorities were focused on.

Gud• 8 months ago

What a weird perspective. The obvious is to reach out to stake holders.

janalsncm• 8 months ago

In another timeline, there are pneumatic tubes or underground trains routing to each building, negating the need for last mile delivery for most packages in dense urban areas. Adding these tunnels is probably too expensive now that the buildings are in place though.

thangalin• 8 months ago

pneumatic tubes or underground trains

Brilliant. See Tom Scott's video about Vancouver's Rabbit Line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTZvA8iFgI

Speaking of Vancouver and trains, the Broadway Subway Project is currently under construction, extending an existing line nearly 6 km for $3 billion.

https://www.broadwaysubway.ca/about/stations

In my hard sci-fi novel (beta readers wanted, see profile for contact), delivery bots play key roles in the plot. For local deliveries, a community of 1,000 people was constructed with no overhead cables, allowing food delivery by drop-drones.

derektank3• 8 months ago

Pipedream Labs is trying to implement a standard delivery tunnel + robotic delivery system, but yeah, I’m afraid they’re facing a serious uphill battle in terms of land use restrictions in the existing built environment

bombcar8• 8 months ago

https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

johnfn3• 8 months ago

“Chicago sidewalks are for people, not delivery robots.”

This seems to be a false dichotomy. Isn't it obvious that if there weren't robots, there would be people delivering your food instead? And as a biker, I actually find delivery drivers to be quite dangerous. They are constantly blocking the bike lane, forcing me to drive into traffic -- or they are riding their extremely heavy and fast bikes dangerously through the bike lane, which is particularly frustrating as the bike lane should be designed to keep me safe.

I don't know. I mean, there are definitely worse evils than delivery drivers in SF, but if you're going to argue that robots are objectively worse, I'm not so sure.

wrs2• 8 months ago

Your overall point is certainly valid, but there's no "dichotomy" there. I'd say "sidewalks are for people, not X" where X is pretty much anything that's not people (including scooters and bikes, even though there are people on them).

If those delivery drivers were parked on the sidewalk, it would be a different discussion. Or if the robots were in the bike lane, we'd be saying "bike lanes are for bikes, not robots".

johnfn3• 8 months ago

My point is that you aren't simply pushing robots off the sidewalk and getting a better city. You have externalized the problem somewhere else. "Look, our streets are free of garbage", he says, dumping it all into the ocean...

trhway3• 8 months ago

if you're going to argue that robots are objectively worse, I'm not so sure.

Robots are becoming worse. I've been living in Mountain View for more than 2 decades, and Waymo cars have been around for years. They never been an issue until recently. I already wrote how several weeks ago our car was almost front-rammed by a Waymo, we had to swerve to avoid it. And recently i saw, and today was myself cut by a Waymo when i was driving in a left turn lane with the Waymo very aggressively crossing the solid white line to get in front of me. I can't remember actual humans cutting it that close, and it was the first time in many years i expressed my frustration by using horn while especially feeling how stupid that horn for AV. That my anecdotal experience much dovetails with some autonomous companies recently stating about increasing of the "assertiveness" of their AVs.

I mean i've been predicting that robots on the battlefield will soon push people out as people can't compete on speed, precision, etc. Yet, it seems that it may happen on public roads faster than on the battlefield. Don't get me wrong, i'm not objecting against such unavoidable robot future (it would be stupid and pointless to object to unavoidable), i just want parity, i.e. the law should allow me to outfit my car with similar (or may be for the old time sake of being a human - with better) sensor and mechanical capabilities and to allow me to for example cut the same way in front of humans and robots like those robots do.

bombcar8• 8 months ago

I’m not certain I’d go out of my way to avoid a collision caused by a robot car owned by a billion dollar company.

hackingonempty• 8 months ago

i just want parity, i.e. the law should allow me to outfit my car with similar (or may be for the old time sake of being a human - with better) sensor and mechanical capabilities and to allow me to for example cut the same way in front of humans and robots like those robots do.

Human drivers kill ~40,000 people a year in the USA. The last thing we need to do is enable humans to drive even more aggressively. Soon it wont make any sense to allow humans to drive at all, just like we currently don't allow them to drive while impaired.

dmz73• 8 months ago

As a pedestrian I find cyclist are worse than cars for obstructing my path. Riding on the footpath (illegal here) even with bike lane available right next to it, not respectig the traffic lights (mowing through pedestrians on crossings or blocking pedestrian crossings when stopped on red light), parking by blocking the footpath (must leave 1.5m of footpath unobstructed), riding the wrong way through traffic, flying down bike lanes (40kmh limit) and raging when anyone infringes their "rights" when they respect noone. In my experience, I estimate that 20% of car drivers are a-holes, 50% or truck drivers and 80% of cyclists.

johnfn3• 8 months ago

Then you surely are in favor of allowing them to be replaced with robots?

shadowgovt• 8 months ago

Where the technology currently stands, people are far faster, more agile, and more compliant with the rules of sidewalk and street use than this category of robots is. They're currently objectively worse; a human being on two legs can make much better use of sidewalk real-estate than a robot (and that's before noting that most delivery couriers are in the street, using a bicycle, scooter, or car).

morkalork• 8 months ago

People were kicked off the roads when automobiles came into prominence and laws against jaywalking were lobbied for by corporations. It would be a shame for that to happen again with sidewalks.

ecommerceguy• 8 months ago

I'm going long net manufacturers. Good strong nets will stop these things dead in their tracks.

kyleee• 8 months ago

I’ve always wondered why nets are used on human criminals as well, seems like it’s worth a try

wiml• 8 months ago

Don't forget the trident, you'll need it if the deliverybot uses its gladius

mmooss2• 8 months ago

Are actual delivery people that expensive or that much more expensive than robots? I assume they make minimum wage.

The availability, cost of acquisition, and engineering needed for support are much lower; the problem solving and communication are infinitely greater.

toast0• 8 months ago

You can't get investments to have people deliver food anymore.

bombcar8• 8 months ago

This is exactly it. Delivery drivers make minimum wage (or less) but the company makes big money selling stocks.

AtlasBarfed• 8 months ago

Bikes aren't allowed on sidewalks but robots with wheels are?

Probably not, but usual Uber style break rules use lawyers playbook

browningstreet• 8 months ago

I’ve lived in coastal tech cities but I’ve never done DoorDash, or Uber eats, or anything by robots. Obviously I’m not the norm with these behaviors but I also don’t understand market demand when I see so many DoorDash vehicles at McDonalds, while the news also talks about how McDonald’s is suffering because they lost the poor income demographic.

I also work from home so going and getting my food, in person, is a welcome respite from my office. But who’s turning a $15 McDonald’s order into a $30 thing, regularly?

bombcar8• 8 months ago

People really value convenience.

I’ve tried it a few times but the food is always late, cold, and expensive.

Just the combo I wanted! I fire up my own tank and roll out now if needed.

xn• 8 months ago

If you bill hourly, $15 for an extra billable hour is a good deal.

Nydhal• 8 months ago

The OP is about Chicago.

King-Aaron• 8 months ago

At what point do we switch over to a network of vacuum tubes to every house to deliver food through.

1970-01-01• 8 months ago

Once fusion and solar take over the energy market, expect Google to convert oil and gas pipelines into FoodTube services.

jerednel• 8 months ago

These save me about $10-$15 on tips regularly. Thankful for Coco.

dogman1050• 8 months ago

Delivery robots may not work out well in Philadelphia.

https://apnews.com/general-news-fc26378306a44d62bc9eb14b122f...

Surac• 8 months ago

One good thing about the robots is you can always scrap them for metal

Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks

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