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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

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 10mo 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 10mo 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.
  - zarzavat 10mo ago
    I'm not sure if you'd consider London to be a safe city but these things won't survive in London either. People are already pissed off about delivery ebike riders, who disobey laws and ride dangerously. But there's very little you can do about humans. A helpless robot that is causing a hazard to pedestrians? A ULEZ-style strike force will be mobilized to drive them out. And what about blind and partially sighted people? The place for wheeled vehicles in on roads. If you want to exist in pedestrian areas then make a robot that can walk.
    - smelendez 10mo ago
      Fundamentally I think they should just use the road and keep to the right (in the US), like other slow moving vehicles. They’d probably be fine in bike lanes where they exist. Maybe they could enter the sidewalk for half a block at a curb cut like a cyclist would do to complete a delivery.
      - dylan604 10mo ago
        There's a very clear and obvious reason they are on the sidewalk. Bikes are not "probably fine" in bike lines themselves though. Bikes are mainly visible to drivers. These things are too small to be in the bike lanes let alone in an actual lane of the road. They'll just be a small speed bump to most cars.
    - exasperaited 10mo ago
      Well, London is a safe city by US standards. But putting that aside, the biggest problems these things will have in the UK is a completely different conception of walkability even compared to, say, NYC. People walk everywhere, pavements are cluttered and crowded, the vast majority of roads are not grid-structured almost anywhere in the UK, etc. So much so that when US firms do consider testing these things properly in the UK they will have to pick somewhere like Bath or Worthing or Hove: enough wealthy people to try it, and easy, grid-structured roads. Not many other good candidates. The second problem they will face is the nature of protest. People won’t vandalise them. There will, however, be extensive civil mischief: people will box them in, mislead them, cover their sensors with googly eyes and woolly hats, put traffic cones on them, and generally make the whole scheme unworkable. And that is if councils don’t outright ban their operators.
yieldcrv 10mo ago
These are solved problems in other cities All anyone has to do is look across the land
- et-al 10mo ago
  Where is this a solved problem? No one likes these things. Seth Rogan reflects the zeitgeist in Platonic.
  - yieldcrv 10mo ago
    Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, LA City, West Hollywood others
    - reaperducer 10mo ago
      Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, LA City, West Hollywood others > A delivery robot collided with a disabled man on L.A. street. The aftermath is getting ugly https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-25/viral-video-of-delivery-robot-colliding-with-man-in-wheelchair-sparks-accessibility-debate https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-25/viral-vi... You employ an interesting definition of "solved."
      - yieldcrv 10mo ago
        That video is hilarious, the “aftermath” is a funny video and that article, by the way. Thats it so I’m having this discussion with parts of the country half a decade behind and this is the level of nuance as if it was half a decade ago? Is that what’s happening? Because thats even funnier
    - nickthegreek 10mo ago
      So no snow and not much rain?
- miltonlost 10mo ago
  How are these solved problems when robot deliveries on sidewalks are a new phenomenon? Also, what other cities?
CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
The robots take 3 hours to get there too. Idk why anyone would want this for food at least
enobrev 10mo 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 10mo ago
  Shoulda knocked it over to make room. Can't wait for the ADA lawsuits.
- phil21 10mo 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.
romanows 10mo 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.
trhway 10mo 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. ?
whimsicalism 10mo 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.
- exasperaited 10mo 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.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    Yes, I would like it as part of a reclaiming of the streets for pedestrians and multi-use lanes. But fewer cars on the road is a good in itself.
    - exasperaited 10mo ago
      More to the point, I think these things can't really replace delivery drivers until they can get there as fast as delivery drivers, which one would hope they don't plan to do on the pavement. Though I can see them pushing to go faster :-/
      - whimsicalism 10mo ago
        Perhaps that's true, I don't know the economics of the places they operate. Definitely going at speed on sidewalks would defeat the entire purpose.
  - marcosdumay 10mo ago
    Well, yes, I imagine any fix for large-ish robots moving around cities has to put them on the roads. At least for most of the time.
floxy 10mo 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 10mo 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.).
chasd00 10mo 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 10mo ago
  I've never seen one but aren't they festooned with cameras, and live streaming?
  - Larrikin 10mo ago
    The escooters also are supposedly equipped with cameras and other deterants. Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for kicking them in to a bush when they are in the way?
    - dylan604 10mo ago
      that's not quite the same as asked though is it? knocking a bike/scooter over isn't exactly vandalizing.
      - reaperducer 10mo ago
        It's Chicago, where people regularly throw e-scooters into the river.
    - dangus 10mo ago
      People should carry around blankets and just put them on top. Now it’s stuck.
    - chasd00 10mo ago
      A few years ago I was visiting a friend of mine in Ft. Lauderdale. We wanted some scooters to ride around on but there were none near him, so we drove and grabbed some off the sidewalk in downtown and threw them in the drunk and went back to his house. Heh they were beeping and vibrating like how you’d imagine some AGI would while being kidnapped. When we got them out at his house we scanned using the app and they unlocked no problem. (I think these were Lime scooters)
vorpalhex 10mo ago
Thank you for sharing. How do other people you know feel about them? Do you see them get vandalized or messed with?
superfish 10mo 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.
dylan604 10mo 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.
dangus 10mo ago
I don’t know how they’re legal when riding a bicycle on the sidewalk isn’t.
y0eswddl 10mo ago
waves from Ogden and Chicago hate those things. I'm ready to start kicking them out the way

samlinnfer 10mo 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 10mo 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.
- zarzavat 10mo ago
  I'm not sure if you'd consider London to be a safe city but these things won't survive in London either. People are already pissed off about delivery ebike riders, who disobey laws and ride dangerously. But there's very little you can do about humans. A helpless robot that is causing a hazard to pedestrians? A ULEZ-style strike force will be mobilized to drive them out. And what about blind and partially sighted people? The place for wheeled vehicles in on roads. If you want to exist in pedestrian areas then make a robot that can walk.
  - smelendez 10mo ago
    Fundamentally I think they should just use the road and keep to the right (in the US), like other slow moving vehicles. They’d probably be fine in bike lanes where they exist. Maybe they could enter the sidewalk for half a block at a curb cut like a cyclist would do to complete a delivery.
    - dylan604 10mo ago
      There's a very clear and obvious reason they are on the sidewalk. Bikes are not "probably fine" in bike lines themselves though. Bikes are mainly visible to drivers. These things are too small to be in the bike lanes let alone in an actual lane of the road. They'll just be a small speed bump to most cars.
  - exasperaited 10mo ago
    Well, London is a safe city by US standards. But putting that aside, the biggest problems these things will have in the UK is a completely different conception of walkability even compared to, say, NYC. People walk everywhere, pavements are cluttered and crowded, the vast majority of roads are not grid-structured almost anywhere in the UK, etc. So much so that when US firms do consider testing these things properly in the UK they will have to pick somewhere like Bath or Worthing or Hove: enough wealthy people to try it, and easy, grid-structured roads. Not many other good candidates. The second problem they will face is the nature of protest. People won’t vandalise them. There will, however, be extensive civil mischief: people will box them in, mislead them, cover their sensors with googly eyes and woolly hats, put traffic cones on them, and generally make the whole scheme unworkable. And that is if councils don’t outright ban their operators.

yieldcrv 10mo ago

These are solved problems in other cities All anyone has to do is look across the land

et-al 10mo ago
Where is this a solved problem? No one likes these things. Seth Rogan reflects the zeitgeist in Platonic.
- yieldcrv 10mo ago
  Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, LA City, West Hollywood others
  - reaperducer 10mo ago
    Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, LA City, West Hollywood others > A delivery robot collided with a disabled man on L.A. street. The aftermath is getting ugly https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-25/viral-video-of-delivery-robot-colliding-with-man-in-wheelchair-sparks-accessibility-debate https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-25/viral-vi... You employ an interesting definition of "solved."
    - yieldcrv 10mo ago
      That video is hilarious, the “aftermath” is a funny video and that article, by the way. Thats it so I’m having this discussion with parts of the country half a decade behind and this is the level of nuance as if it was half a decade ago? Is that what’s happening? Because thats even funnier
  - nickthegreek 10mo ago
    So no snow and not much rain?
miltonlost 10mo ago
How are these solved problems when robot deliveries on sidewalks are a new phenomenon? Also, what other cities?

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago

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

enobrev 10mo 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 10mo ago
Shoulda knocked it over to make room. Can't wait for the ADA lawsuits.
phil21 10mo 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.

romanows 10mo 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.

trhway 10mo 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. ?

whimsicalism 10mo 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.

exasperaited 10mo 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.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  Yes, I would like it as part of a reclaiming of the streets for pedestrians and multi-use lanes. But fewer cars on the road is a good in itself.
  - exasperaited 10mo ago
    More to the point, I think these things can't really replace delivery drivers until they can get there as fast as delivery drivers, which one would hope they don't plan to do on the pavement. Though I can see them pushing to go faster :-/
    - whimsicalism 10mo ago
      Perhaps that's true, I don't know the economics of the places they operate. Definitely going at speed on sidewalks would defeat the entire purpose.
- marcosdumay 10mo ago
  Well, yes, I imagine any fix for large-ish robots moving around cities has to put them on the roads. At least for most of the time.

floxy 10mo 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 10mo 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.).

chasd00 10mo 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 10mo ago
I've never seen one but aren't they festooned with cameras, and live streaming?
- Larrikin 10mo ago
  The escooters also are supposedly equipped with cameras and other deterants. Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for kicking them in to a bush when they are in the way?
  - dylan604 10mo ago
    that's not quite the same as asked though is it? knocking a bike/scooter over isn't exactly vandalizing.
    - reaperducer 10mo ago
      It's Chicago, where people regularly throw e-scooters into the river.
  - dangus 10mo ago
    People should carry around blankets and just put them on top. Now it’s stuck.
  - chasd00 10mo ago
    A few years ago I was visiting a friend of mine in Ft. Lauderdale. We wanted some scooters to ride around on but there were none near him, so we drove and grabbed some off the sidewalk in downtown and threw them in the drunk and went back to his house. Heh they were beeping and vibrating like how you’d imagine some AGI would while being kidnapped. When we got them out at his house we scanned using the app and they unlocked no problem. (I think these were Lime scooters)

vorpalhex 10mo ago

Thank you for sharing. How do other people you know feel about them? Do you see them get vandalized or messed with?

superfish 10mo 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.

dylan604 10mo 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.

dangus 10mo ago

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

y0eswddl 10mo ago

waves from Ogden and Chicago hate those things. I'm ready to start kicking them out the way