Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks

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.

> “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.

Valid 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.

Toronto 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...

I had one of these delivery robots run over my foot in Chicago. I was not impressed.

Are 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.

Is it a felony if I kick that thing off the sidewalk ?

I'm going long net manufacturers. Good strong nets will stop these things dead in their tracks.

In 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.

People 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.

These 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.

I 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.