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Am I the only one who hates delivery robots?
- dominotw 5mo agowe have these all over chicago and everyone hates them. I thought i hate it because they take up public sidewalks ( possibly illegaly) or that they are hurting delivery drivers or that some guy in india is watching me through the creepy camera on the robot. But those are posthoc rationalizations i just seem to hate them and i cant really explain why.
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]
- cassepipe 5mo agoWell maybe if all the space was not given to cars there could be some little space for those small lightweight vehicles which is much more efficient than those stupid fat trucks (EDIT: by which I meant SUVs and the likes)
- heavyset_go 5mo agoAgreed, bicycle paths for bike delivery would be more efficient
- left-struck 5mo agoEdit: I misunderstood what OP meant by trucks. NVM How are light weight vehicles more efficient than trucks? That’s such a broad statement with absolutely no data provided to back it up. Efficiency matters a lot depending on the context. Delivering 40,000 kg of good cross country? Even a diesel truck is going to be more efficient than 10k little robot. Last mile delivery? Yes, obviously it’s not good to send a semi trailer to deliver a pizza. The point is, those big fat trucks aren’t just there to annoy you, they are doing something pretty useful.
- Onavo 5mo agoI don't think OP's upset with the actual delivery trucks (though NYC banned them from city center for very good reasons). It's those F150 and Cybertruck pavement princesses and massive SUVs that are problematic.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoNobody is using semis to deliver pizzas and nobody is using sidewalk RC coolers to deliver pallets, what are you on about
- left-struck 5mo agoWell that’s exactly my point, big trucks exist and are used for good reasons.
- jszymborski 5mo agoI think it's very rational to hate them for taking up public infrastructure for pedestrians, which already is often neglected in NA cities. Our cities already deemphasize people being out and about in public spaces, so car-centric, and this is an entirely intolerable insult to injury. They further alienate folks from jobs in their community, they exacerbate the already artificial friction of just walking to a restaurant and being present in your community. It represents an impressive amount of awful in a tiny cube.
- hombre_fatal 5mo agoYeah, pedestrians are already an afterthought, getting this tiny sliver of walk space next to the massive road. And now you have to share it with someone’s private burrito transport.
- dylan604 5mo ago> so car-centric Isn't this a solution to that though as the delivery would otherwise be made by a human in a car. I don't have these robots in my area, but I do have the Walmart delivery drones. Those are interesting to watch. A neighbor recently had a delivery by two drones where one approached within seconds of the first recovering the cradle before moving into the same spot. To the point that I was left wondering if the drones have self co-ordination abilities to know a fellow drone is already in place, or if the timing of the system was just right to avoid collision. Either way, I find the constant drone sound of them zipping by annoying. I'm a 10 minute walk from their base, so they are pretty constant.
- deaux 5mo ago> Isn't this a solution to that though as the delivery would otherwise be made by a human in a car. No, it does the direct opposite. It makes it worse for humans to walk. It actually makes it better for non-delivery humans to take a car, because there's less delivery drivers on the road. Improving car-centrism would be the exact opposite. It would improve the human walking experience and degrade the human driving experience.
- fontain 5mo agoThey're an anthropomorphic avatar of everything that is wrong with the business of technology. They're the broken promises of technology with a face. The promise of technology that we've all bought into is a better world, a world that lifts people up, instead we've got these dumb little robots that drive around making it even harder for people to survive. If we lived in a world where everyone's basic needs were met, these little robots would make you feel different.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoTwo of them have somehow crashed into bus shelters, smashing the glass, most recently on Lawrence iirc. That's good enough reason for me. I use those bus shelters, especially on Lawrence!
- ranger_danger 5mo agoWait until you see the track record of actual delivery drivers.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoWell zero delivery drivers have smashed that bus shelter in the 4 years I've lived here but one RC cooler has
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoThey take local human jobs, get in the way, and seem extremely "accidentally" kickable if you ask me.
- cassepipe 5mo ago> The e-bike craze, which is putting many people, including kids, in the hospital at an alarming rate, has thus far defied similar regulatory frameworks. CTRL + f : "suv" 0 matches "truck" ? 0 matches I stopped reading past that. That level of carbrain is intolerable. If you think light vehicles capped at 25km/h is an issue idk what to tell you. At least with delivery robots people don't have to take a one ton metal box everywhere with them just to get groceries because they live in a poorly designed car-centric city.
- olyjohn 5mo agoThey're not talking about properly regulated e-bikes. They're talking about the huge groups of kids riding around on Surrons and other electric dirt bikes that are actually just motorcycles. They're getting bikes that can do 70mph, wearing no safety gear, and riding them in traffic, and getting hit. That's the e-bike craze the author is talking about. So calm your tits.
- meowkit 5mo agoWhat are the fatalities for e-bikes vs SUVs in the US per year? Your comment is irrelevant otherwise because last time I checked cars are the real problem, and concerns over e bikes / delivery bots is just another lame extension of “safetyism” and ignorance around public transport failures that just misses the mark. “Riding in traffic” is half the issue here. Like trying to explain water to fish.
- NDlurker 5mo agoThey can both be a problem. I saw a kid hitting a dike like a ramp with one of these electric dirt bikes. I've seen kids too small for these cruising around way too fast with no helmet. Big trucks and SUVs are a much bigger problem. But that doesn't mean kids riding around on motorcycles isn't a problem either.
- cassepipe 5mo agoThe point of contentions is calling them e-bikes instead mopeds or e-motos or motorcyles, which you did, but the article didn't. And they are a journalist so I hold them to higher standard.
- wotsdat 5mo ago[dead]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cozzyd 5mo agomy 4-year old daughter likes them and is sad whenever they seem to get stuck in random places for no reason.
- Joel_Mckay 5mo agoEven a bit of cardboard can do surprising tasks with a bit of help. Maybe a fun project. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn1tSPP0VF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn1tSPP0VF8 http://www.tweenbots.com/ http://www.tweenbots.com/
- queenkjuul 5mo agoThere are people that don't hate them?
- corranh 5mo agoPeople who don’t have to set foot on public sidewalks don’t mind them.
- ranger_danger 5mo agoI prefer them to delivery drivers that damage your packages, get overworked/underpaid and get subjected to safety/crime issues.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoYou must not use sidewalks
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- verteu 5mo ago> Labor-saving devices are rarely that — instead labor is shifted, from one department to another, from the body to the brain, or standards are raised — when laundry is done by a machine, its operator must ensure that all clothing is bright, soft, sweet smelling and stain-free What? The washing machine was so effective at saving labor that it's widely considered a major driver of gender equality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine
- nicbou 5mo agoTwo things can be true. In this case, both are. Laundry machines were a massive improvement, but it did raise expectations around clothing.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Kapura 5mo agoI think it's important to note that these things don't take jobs from humans; they dislocate the jobs from expensive humans where the vehicles operate to less expensive humans with an internet connection in the global south. This is literally outsourcing physical labour overseas.
- kaonwarb 5mo agoThat will apply to only a smaller percentage, even in early days. It's very typical for one human operator to remotely oversee many robots.
- Kapura 5mo agoso, many jobs in a high paying country are being replaced by a single employee overseas. Do you see how this is not a better outcome?
- SwellJoe 5mo agoI work on delivery robots (not like the ones discussed in the article, they operate in privately owned buildings, not on public streets) and I can assure you the company I work for employs no human drivers overseas, or anywhere else. Of course, the robots have teleoperation capabilities, for demos and testing, but no good way to actually complete deliveries with a human driving. Our teleops feature is literally just a PlayStation controller or clicking arrows in a web app. It's just not a thing we ever developed or considered developing, and not an expense that I think could be justified. The robots I work on operate fully autonomously, so why waste human time on routine deliveries? I don't know anything about the delivery robots roaming the streets and discussed in this article, but it's possible to build fully autonomous delivery robots. I guess in a robot like these, one might have to have more human monitoring, since they could get stolen or damaged, block traffic or prevent wheelchair users from using curb cuts, etc. But, if any of them are outsourcing the actual routine driving and delivery to people, even people in low-pay locations, they'll eventually be beaten by someone who isn't. There's no reason for a human to be driving robots at this point.
- seemaze 5mo agoI stumbled on the most hilarious cross-walk encounter between one of the these delivery bots and a Waymo in downtown phoenix.. it seems that neither was programmed (probably rightfully so) to take the initiative in the situation, so what ensued was a painfully drawn out exchange of agentic deference.
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoInterestingly, the solution to this problem in humans is that all humans have different individual aggressiveness levels. That works pretty well, but I would guess it won't be one of the first things that robot fleet operators try.
- Marsymars 5mo agoMakes me think of https://www.thecut.com/2015/01/manslamming-manspreading-microaggressions.html https://www.thecut.com/2015/01/manslamming-manspreading-micr...
- globular-toast 5mo agoThe standard way to do it with machines is to use a bit of randomisation along with exponential backoff. It's been used for collision avoidance in network protocols for a long time.
- tanseydavid 5mo agoI'm vibe coding a "rock-paper-scissors" protocol for robots to be able to negotiate situations just such as this.
- xnx 5mo agoDelivery robots aren't programmed. They're all remotely controlled in real-time AFAIK.
- nixpulvis 5mo agoI hate them, but not for perhaps the normal reason. I also hate the way delivery has progressed. Delivery used to be relegated to a few types of food which were designed better for it. Remember when your pizza came hot in an insulated pizza sleeve, not dropped at your entrance cold and sad? We're making it more and more normal to completely avoid interacting with each other and having service be something we cherish, I think this is hugely detrimental to society.
- XorNot 5mo agoI don't know what harm you are imagining happens here. Because the actual environmental harm of normal customer pick up is pretty large - its very inefficient to have hundreds of people converge on one location, rather then a single person or (robot) deliver many orders to the same hundreds of people.
- Markoff 5mo agothese robots can take only one order at a time (at least here in Prague) since they don't have multiple separated compartments and it takes ages to deliver one order (company claims 14 minutes in 1-2km zone, but I have my doubts about their data, I assume at best they mean delivery time since pick up in restaurant to customer building), so it's much more efficient for people to walk that 1-2km or take public transport to pick up their food I remember they proudly published their THREE robots delivered successfully 130 orders over 4 months period since trial started in December 2025, even over one month it would be less than two orders per day per robot, over 4 months the number is a bad joke, not even one order or day. https://www.lupa.cz/aktuality/autonomnich-rozvazkovych-robotu-v-karline-pribude-ziskavaji-take-novou-praci/ https://www.lupa.cz/aktuality/autonomnich-rozvazkovych-robot... Though now they are planning sweeping robots which seems like much better use of robots doing something useful beneficial to everyone, not only to bunch of lazy hipsters.
- Marsymars 5mo ago> Because the actual environmental harm of normal customer pick up is pretty large - its very inefficient to have hundreds of people converge on one location, rather then a single person or (robot) deliver many orders to the same hundreds of people. A few months ago, this was the reasoning that tipped me into looking into grocery delivery options. Unfortunately, I'm not really interested in services using instacart/doordash/etc., but they've been driving the in-house delivery services out of the market. Of the ~5 grocery services here, 2 were always instacart/doordash, the formerly 2 best options abandoned their in-house services within the past year, and the remaining option is expensive enough that I'm not really motivated away from just driving over to the closest store myself. (The store with delivery is notably further away.) I guess maybe that's just the cost of delivery outside of the gig model, and the dis-efficiencies of everyone driving to the store are externalized away...
- vansbree 5mo ago[dead]
- siliconc0w 5mo agoI don't get how it's okay to commercialize public side walks. Can I just put a vending machine on wheels, park it in front of people's homes, and raise a 100M to replace convenience stores?
- wheelerwj 5mo agoDo you think roads are somehow commercial property?
- kurtis_reed 5mo agoGuess what, human couriers use the sidewalk
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo agoIn many jurisdictions you can. The source article is from California, and under California law cities generally must allow street vending.
- gverrilla 5mo agoPublic in capitalism means only "up for grabs".
- Markoff 5mo agoIf they didn't use sidewalks, bike paths, pedestrian crossing or roads obstructing mostly pedestrians I think I wouldn't have problem with them, butt that's not the case so I dislike them very much, though I like the use of technology. But overall they support unhealthy lifestyle, they deliver food (at least here in Europe they seem to be used only for food) only over short distance where client could easily and faster just pick up their own food, if they don't wanna dine in or prepare their food at home (in advance). We have already problems with stupid drivers parking their cars or even driving their cars on sidewalk, we don't need another obstruction.
- SwellJoe 5mo agoCounterpoint (though I agree there is often a problem with them sharing often already insufficient pedestrian infrastructure): Many people can't walk to pick up their food. Pervasive delivery service is a huge quality of life improvement for a variety of disabled folks and folks who are homebound for whatever reason. And, the alternative to these robots is exactly this: "We have already problems with stupid drivers parking their cars or even driving their cars on sidewalk" The alternative is not, actually, that everyone will walk to go pick up their food. It's either a gig worker, almost certainly in a car, probably a gas-driven car, or a little electric robot. It's usually a choice between more cars on the road or more robots on the sidewalk. I used to get deliveries by bike, sometimes, and that's also cool, but pretty rare outside of particularly dense cities. I don't actually have any objection to their use being limited/regulated in some areas if they're disruptive for pedestrians. But, consider what they replace, and whether they're worse or better. (You may come down on the side of "worse", and I won't argue with you. In some places, they probably are.)
- Markoff 5mo agothat works only in theory, these robots deliver the food only on the street, so they might as well leave in restaurant since they make no difference for someone on 2nd or higher floor, most of the people in areas where they operate don't live in villas, but they either deliver to companies or to residential multi floor buildings plus disabled people have already their carers to take care of the food and can't rely on unreliable robot which will get stuck even on simple pedestrian crossing so yes, human delivery service to the door is improvement to disabled people's lives, robot delivery to the street sidewalk certainly isn't counterpoint to the cars - they are much more efficient, they can delivery many orders at once, they are faster and they can deliver food to the door for disabled people, so these delivery robots are completely useless alternative besides companies saving money on human workers btw I'd rather prefer police doing their actual work when car park on the sidewalk rather than robot alternative, I think the best compromise which is already used here would be ebike/motorbike delivery not taking any significant space personally I don't order any food so I don't really have horse in this race, I think I've made two food orders over like 3-4 years, one for my birthday and other was wife's online team building paid by her company, both were for like 5-6km distance robot would take hours to deliver
- thot_experiment 5mo agoI saw a video of one in a bike lane the other day, zero percent chance that I won't kick it over if I see one doing that. Absolutely fucking not.
- soupspaces 5mo ago[dead]
- globular-toast 5mo agoWho would ever have thought filling up the few places you have to walk with more cars was a bad idea? This isn't a problem with "robots", it's the problem with cars. People like to drive their own cars, but everyone hates other people's cars. It's universal. It just takes different things to cause people to see the problem. For me it was walking and cycling to get around, for the author is delivery robots.
- satisfice 5mo agoI’d like to think I would destroy them wherever I encountered one, like a highly specialized Zorro. But I’m probably a coward.
- mugiseyebrows 5mo agoPeople tend to hate everything that moves or produces sound and go far to rationalize it.
- alamortsubite 5mo agoIf this were true, car-centrism would not be the dominant kool-aid.