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Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks
- ElijahLynn 11mo agoValid 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 11mo agoImagine 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.
- mmooss 11mo agoWhy are you comparing them to cars, rather than the (e-)bikes used in most cities?
- climb_stealth 11mo agoGod 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.
- smelendez 11mo agoIt’s a vicious cycle. I’m not a big delivery fan myself but you go into some small casual restaurants now and everyone else in there is a delivery driver.
- array_key_first 11mo agoI think it's a symptom of our work culture and lifestyle. When people are spending anywhere between 1-2 hours a day in a car going to a job that sucks the life out of them, I'm not surprised they don't have the energy to get food for themselves. Convenience services thrive in America because it's the only way the working class can claw back a teensy bit of time and energy. We could have had hybrid or even remote work, but that dream is dead. Traffic sucks, outside is loud and stinky, and you're in the office minimum 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. Minimum. I actually don't know anyone who works that little.
- BLKNSLVR 11mo agoYep, if you think you're too busy to go out to get food yourself, then you've definitely been breathing in your own farts for too long.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> extend to which some people get food delivered is absurd More than getting uppity online about others' personal dining choices?
- whyenot 11mo agoWhy 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.
- recursive 11mo agoWhat does "good" for the environment even mean? I always assumed it means "good" for human purposes. But if we replace humans with robots, then the goodness of the environment seems somewhat moot. Oceans filled with plastic would be "good" for something. Just probably not us. Maybe robots?
- dweinus 11mo ago...so, are assuming that the humans stop eating/existing after you replace them with a robot?
- AmbroseBierce 11mo agoUBI maybe? I'm joking, at least when talking about America, because maybe at least one of those Nordic countries will figure it out.
- dweinus 11mo agoSweet, let's do that, but it still will be more environmentally friendly to bike the burrito down the block than to build & maintain a robot.
- ipaddr 11mo agoUBI. $500 per adult per month (~$1.4T) - existing welfare. for $1000 per month it would cost $3.1T. What about the children? $1,200 for every adult + $400 for every child 4.1 trillion/year The federal budget is 6 trillion/year. There would need to be deflation for 1,200 a month to have the buying power of the average income now. Right now that's minimum wage.
- alistairSH 11mo agoAll the more reason to build separate infrastructure for bicycles and other “in-between” vehicles.
- derektank 11mo agoYeah, 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
- DSMan195276 11mo agoI think the problem is that if they're in the road their liability and required smarts go up a lot. Right now it sounds like they're at least partially relying on being the largest thing on the "road" and everyone else will naturally get out of their way.
- abdullahkhalids 11mo agoA slow moving robot on a sidewalk in the worst case makes it inconvenient for pedestrians, and robs the rights of those in wheelchairs etc. A medium speed robot in the bike lane in the worst case causes a fatal or broken-bone accident.
- hombre_fatal 11mo agoTrue. I don't think they belong in bike lanes nor pedestrian-only sidewalks. These delivery companies are being subsidized by our already-limited pedestrian infrastructure. Also, no human should have to move out of the way or trip over some someone's burrito delivery robot.
- arjie 11mo agoThe point of infrastructure is to have a common substrate where members of society can provide services to each other. Sure, in some sense there are subsidies but we have to account for the positive externalities. After all, a tennis court has very low utilization of space so that's a "subsidy for rich guys to talk about crypto". And golf courses likewise. It's just not a meaningful way to think of infrastructure. The point of infrastructure is that it benefits society, and it will benefit some people more than others. Nice sidewalks benefit the rich people who live there more than they do the poor people who have to drive from the suburbs to work there. And this business about "have to move out of the way" is really a bit much. If they're impeding the disabled then that's of some significance, and ensuring that those who need wheelchair access can still get places is worth it, but any able-bodied person can easily step aside. I find the online reaction to so much of this stuff hard to fathom. Occasionally, I'll walk by a Lime / Bird scooter that's fallen over and I just pick it up and place it on the side. The net gain to society of having easy-to-access last-mile transportation is probably much greater than this happening occasionally. I really think these things are far overblown. But if you go online, you'd think that sidewalks are completely unwalkable. I principally walk and bike (now e-bike) places and this has never been a problem either in San Francisco or London - both cities where a large contingent has constantly insisted that it is.
- Mistletoe 11mo agoImagine if the people ordering delivery actually moved their body and went and got the food.
- echelon 11mo agoAtlanta 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.
- smt88 11mo agoThe 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 10mo agoBikes 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 10mo agoWait, 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 10mo agoAs 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 11mo 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-v 11mo agoRecently 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.
- boh 11mo agoThe 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.
- ausbah 11mo agoif an animal runs into the road and is hit by a vehicle, as long as the driver safely stops after, i don’t think the driver is generally charged after afaik
- boh 11mo agoThe comment is responding to a premise made regarding a person being hit by a car--which believe it or not--has legal ramifications. And we don't have to think about it regarding the pet, civil liability is still in play for them too.
- xnx 11mo ago1) "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 11mo agoTrue, 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-v 11mo agoI 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
- bombcar 11mo agoCan’t go under it. Can’t go around it. Have to go over it!
- venusenvy47 11mo agoHow heavy are they? Can they be lifted by the end and rotated out of the way?
- Sabinus 10mo agoThat 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.
- jeffbee 11mo agoYou 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 11mo agoI 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 11mo agoThis 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 11mo agoThere'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.
- miltonlost 11mo agoThese 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.
- jeffbee 11mo agoThese 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.
- i987789 11mo agoI had one of these delivery robots run over my foot in Chicago. I was not impressed.
- bombcar 11mo agoGlad you weren’t! Having your foot impressed into the sidewalk would have been devastating.
- nightshift1 11mo agoIs it a felony if I kick that thing off the sidewalk ?
- monerozcash 11mo agoIn Illinois? If you cause more than $300 in damage, yes.
- floundy 11mo agoJust 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.
- c22 11mo agoCross your fingers and hope there's less than $300 worth of food in there.
- monerozcash 11mo agoOr just push for better regulation instead of resorting to childish vandalism?
- exogenousdata 11mo agoMore childish than the process of getting new regulations against big-tech approved in local government? I’d say it’s a tie, at best. Was the Boston Tea Party childish vandalism or heroic patriotism? Only history gets to decide how the actions of disobedience are ultimately judged.
- monerozcash 11mo agoI suspect that as a rule, anyone comparing their own activities to things like the Boston Tea Party is pretty much always wrong.
- 11mo ago
- neom 11mo agoToronto 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-ban-sidewalk-robots/ https://www.therobotreport.com/toronto-city-council-votes-to...
- sleepyguy 11mo agoThese 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.
- neom 11mo agoIf 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_ 11mo agoThe 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.
- janalsncm 11mo agoIn 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 11mo ago> pneumatic tubes or underground trains Brilliant. See Tom Scott's video about Vancouver's Rabbit Line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTZvA8iFgI 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 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.
- derektank 11mo agoPipedream 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
- bombcar 11mo agohttps://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...
- johnfn 11mo 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.
- wrs 11mo agoYour 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".
- johnfn 11mo agoMy 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...
- 1shooner 11mo agoBut isn't this whole concept externalizing the commercial micro-transit problem onto pedestrian-only right of way? The sidewalk is the ocean in this metaphor.
- wrs 11mo agoIt’s not clear to me there even is a “problem”. We did just fine before there were either robots or DoorDash drivers clogging up the road/sidewalk. (Admittedly DoorDash was very handy in 2020.) The problem is in allowing commercial interests to unilaterally clog public infrastructure.
- morkalork 11mo agoPeople 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 11mo agoI'm going long net manufacturers. Good strong nets will stop these things dead in their tracks.
- mmooss 11mo agoAre 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.
- bshul-silkline1 11mo ago[dead]
- AtlasBarfed 11mo agoBikes aren't allowed on sidewalks but robots with wheels are? Probably not, but usual Uber style break rules use lawyers playbook
- browningstreet 11mo agoI’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?
- bombcar 11mo agoPeople 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 11mo agoIf you bill hourly, $15 for an extra billable hour is a good deal.
- Nydhal 11mo agoThe OP is about Chicago.
- King-Aaron 11mo agoAt what point do we switch over to a network of vacuum tubes to every house to deliver food through.
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoOnce fusion and solar take over the energy market, expect Google to convert oil and gas pipelines into FoodTube services.
- jerednel 11mo agoThese save me about $10-$15 on tips regularly. Thankful for Coco.
- dogman1050 10mo agoDelivery robots may not work out well in Philadelphia. https://apnews.com/general-news-fc26378306a44d62bc9eb14b122f9b70 https://apnews.com/general-news-fc26378306a44d62bc9eb14b122f...
- Surac 10mo agoOne good thing about the robots is you can always scrap them for metal