Move over, pedestrians — the future has arrived, and it’s rolling directly toward your ankles at a brisk four miles per hour.
Delivery robots, those cheerful little wheeled coolers that tech companies swear are revolutionizing last-mile logistics, are quietly becoming the most controversial thing to ever happen to a sidewalk. And that’s including the guy who does tai chi there every morning at 6am.
Cities across the US and UK are increasingly finding themselves in a peculiar standoff: on one side, Silicon Valley startups dreaming of a gleaming automated future; on the other, literally everyone who just wants to walk to the corner store without performing an impromptu choreographed dance around a robot carrying someone else’s burrito.
The complaints are piling up faster than undelivered packages. Residents report having to step into the street to avoid the machines, which — and this cannot be stressed enough — is the exact opposite of what sidewalks were invented for. Wheelchair users and people with visual impairments have raised particularly urgent concerns, noting that a 50-pound robot that doesn’t understand the concept of ‘excuse me’ is a genuine accessibility nightmare wrapped in a cheerful branded shell.
San Francisco, eternal laboratory for ideas that sound great in a pitch deck, has already moved to restrict the little wheeled wanderers after residents complained the bots were essentially colonizing public infrastructure for private profit. Other cities are watching nervously, rulebooks in hand.
The companies behind the robots maintain the technology is safe, improving constantly, and represent the inevitable march of progress. To be fair, the robots do dutifully stop at crosswalks, which puts them ahead of roughly 40% of cyclists.
The real question nobody seems able to answer is a beautifully simple one: who exactly owns the sidewalk? Taxpayers built it. Pedestrians use it. But apparently a venture-capital-funded snack delivery bot has opinions about that too.
The robots, for their part, have declined to comment. They’re very busy delivering someone’s sushi.
*Source: BBC News via Reddit r/offbeat*
Original story via Reddit Offbeat
