Chicagoans are ducking for cover as delivery robots turn into heat-seeking missiles for innocent glass structures.
On Tuesday, another one of these lunchboxes on wheels seems to have smashed into a bus shelter and rained shattered glass all over the sidewalk. Bizarrely, it’s the second time in a matter of days that this exact same thing happened in the Windy City.
Weird coincidence, or do the machines just have it out for fragile transit infrastructure? Something seems to be afoot, since the offending robots were operated by two different companies.
The latest crash, as reported by local outlet Block Club, was perpetrated by a robot from Coco, one of several robotics firms allowed to operate deliveries in certain parts of Chicago. Footage posted online shows the Coco bot idling in the mess it made, with glass shards sprinkled across its top.
In a statement to Block Club, Coco insisted that this was a “rare, isolated incident” and that it was launching an investigation into how the crash happened.
“This is the first time one of our robots has collided with a structure like this. Our robots operate at a top speed of about 5 miles per hour, and safety is a top priority in how we design and monitor our systems,” Carl Hansen, Coco’s head of safety and government relations, said in the statement.
It’s a screwup that will cast even more scrutiny on the robots’ presence in the city. Days before, a delivery bot from Serve Robotics also smashed into a glass bus shelter. In a viral video of the aftermath, the robot jerks back and forth to shake the glass off, showering yet more dangerous shards onto the sidewalk.
Since then, another video surfaced showing the moment of the crash. At first, the robot drives around a glass panel displaying an ad, but then swerves back inside the bus shelter and hits the panel without one.
In its own statement to Block Club, a Serve Robotics spokesperson said it was “reviewing what happened to make improvements.”
Neither Serve nor Coco were willing to speculate on what led to the crashes, or address the mishap being repeated by their competitor.
Luddites couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect argument against letting these autonomous delivery drones swarm Chicago’s sidewalks if you’d asked. Back to back identical crash? Come on!
Indeed, the blundering machines have been pretty controversial since the moment they were deployed, with Coco launching its service in 2024, and Serve last September.
In February, Alderman Daniel La Spata blocked both companies from expanding operations into the city’s 1st Ward, citing a survey of residents which showed that over 80 percent of them were opposed to the delivery bots’ presence.
It’s a touchy issue across the country, too. Last year, a disabled man who uses a mobility scooter posted a video of a delivery robot driving aggressively as he tried to move around it on a sidewalk, spawning a fiery debate on social media and generating national news coverage. Many locals see them as a nuisance that take away jobs and surveil neighborhoods with their extensive array of cameras. If robotics companies hope to win hearts and minds, not coming in like a literal wrecking ball might help.
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The post There’s Something Incredibly Weird About Two Delivery Robots Crashing Through Glass Bus Shelter in Chicago Within a Few Days of Each Other appeared first on Futurism.
