Appreciated or not, these little boxes on wheels have once again amused and exasperated the locals.
Deployed in Los Angeles since May, the service is not yet perfect. Between inconveniences, vandalism and comical situations, autonomous delivery still has to convince partners and communities.
A reckless robot
One morning around 10 a.m. in Los Angeles, as a school was evacuated due to a suspected shooting and the area was cordoned off by law enforcement, an Uber Eats delivery robot appeared. In a video posted on Twitter, he is seen looking for an exit through the security tape before a journalist helps him through. We see him continue on his way, even making his way through rather perplexed police officers.
In a country where cities are generally dangerous and unsuitable for pedestrians and cyclists, these delivery robots find themselves on sometimes crowded sidewalks that cannot accommodate many people. In several cities, there are stories of vandalized robots and testimonies of residents annoyed by this type of service.
An error from a supervisor
Serve Robotics, the maker of the robots deployed in Los Angeles, says it makes more sense to transport a meal in a small machine rather than a vehicle normally designed to carry human passengers. Nevertheless, when we know that in 2016, the Dallas police attached explosives to a robot to eliminate a mass shooter, we can only understand the cynicism of the witnesses who saw the self-driving vehicle of the Californian start-up at the middle of the police.
The company assures that there is a procedure that should allow its devices to bypass these newly restricted areas. Even though they are capable of complete autonomy in some places in a city, robots still need to be supervised remotely by humans. The supervisor in charge at the time of the incident thought he was being waved through. It would therefore be a human error, an argument often put forward by companies like Serve Robotics to attest to the reliability of their products. This event is no less disconcerting, as this incident could have been prejudicial.
But the most important thing in this whole affair is that the reckless robot contained no explosives…or Uber Eats orders!
Source : Vice
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