They had these in Berkeley when I was there, my thought was always, why aren't the homeless hunting these for food?

I have a friend who uses a wheelchair and he hates encountering these things in the wild. I know there's a couple different companies making these things and I'm not sure if they all behave like this, but they take up the whole sidewalk and won't backup or turn to get out of the way.

Instead they just sit there blinking and beeping at my friend, and of course in a wheelchair it's not easy (or safe!) to go over the curb or anything to get around them.

Automated delivery sounds cool at first glance but they probably shouldn't be on the sidewalk if they can't accommodate the humans who also need to get around.

They are motorized vehicles, and as such should not operate on sidewalks or other pedestrian areas.

This article captures the problem exactly. In Miami, there are areas where sidewalks are too narrow for a robot (from Serve Robotics) and a human to share simultaneously, so either the robot or the human goes first. If the human wants to go first, they have to step into the street and walk around the robot. The robot and its operator are never courteous enough to back up.

Which raises the question: why should these robots be prioritized over humans? Why can't they use the streets when there are pedestrians? Why should the SAFETY OF HUMANS be compromised for these profit-seeking corporations and their robots?

I’m really not convinced these serve a genuine purpose at all. Beyond them always being in your way, they seem to be incredibly inefficient. This is something that would work better in a large building like a hospital, a mall, or an airport, rather than city streets.

Seeing this reminds me of a project I delivered in the past. A tram installation was being planned in my city, and a researcher conducting a feasibility study asked me to build a crawler that would submit data for their research materials. As part of the process, they explained the study to me, and I got the sense that a tram and a delivery robot are essentially the same thing in this context.

When I was organizing the results, the personal conclusion I reached was that this kind of design is ultimately about redistributing existing public space. And in that process, the first people to be pushed to the margins are, by and large, the transportation disadvantaged. This delivery robot is consuming the same public resource, public space, and the same dynamic plays out: the weakest end up being pushed out first. I think it's a similar issue.

The argument of proponents used to be that it removes a lot of large vehicles off the street for small local deliveries… yes and onto the sidewalk. Makes no sense.

These robots cover Los Angeles’ walkable areas, because they’re the only places they work for delivery. I hate them— my understanding is oftentimes they’re piloted by someone overseas and not subject to all US Labor laws that even a contractor would be. To me, this seems like the worst of both worlds:

It takes up public space in the US, but the operator oftentimes doesn’t benefit from actually living and working in the US. At worst, it literally removes gig jobs from the US while still maintaining the physical presence a delivery person here could do, with no improvement to the delivery experience. So why do we allow it?