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Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

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Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#61

Post by showerst »

_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

This is my _exact_ experience, I end up having to move at least two a week to get our stroller past, and they are a huge pain when my wheelchair-bound mother visits.

I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the Chesapeake ...

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#62

Post by duxup »

gfd wrote: post #14

I didn't realize we had food delivery bots already...

They're mostly located on college campuses / in those highly localized areas.

Give the company a pretty reasonable controlled environment to work / develop in rather than deal with all the exceptions you would have at scale.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#63

Post by fishtacos »

pjerem wrote: post #57
gfd wrote: post #14

I didn't realize we had food delivery bots already...

Same. That for sure fixes a huge problem of humankind. When I was young, we had to walk hundreds of meters to eat a pizza.

The funniest/strangest/saddest angle I've encountered on this thread so far is regarding disabled people potentially not getting their food... as if human delivery was somehow not an option.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#64

Post by throwawaynay »

steelframe wrote: post #40
throwawaynay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe they pity the students who are going to get cold pizza 2 hours late?

Maybe they should pity the human delivery workers who they are helping to put out of a job?

I don't think anybody is dreaming of being an underpaid delivery worker for ubereats with zero benefits, high risk of accidents, and just overall terrible working conditions

when we invented aqueducts who cared about the water delivery workers?

those are terrible jobs and they should be automated/replaced

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#65

Post by duxup »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #19
r_klancer wrote: post #12

What's the business model here? It seems like delivery bots could only work on wide walking paths on closed campuses. Or are the startups here assuming we'll build dedicated infrastructure for them? I can't imagine they would ever work in real world cities (putting rolling roadblocks on busy public sidewalks is antisocial at best, and besides they're bound to get blocked by obstructions en route that require them to…

If the new infrastructure cost is less than the old manual labor cost, you can bank on the infrastructure being built. Truckers holding out on "only humans can handle last mile" are in for a surprise when we start rebuilding the last miles.

I want one of those pneumatic tubes that banks have installed that runs from the local Chipotle to my house ... I'd even pay for it.

I think even random citizens would be happy to adjust to it.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#66

Post by Robotbeat »

_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior. And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in more antisocial behavior.

I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#67

Post by csours »

jdpigeon wrote: post #29

Are these human piloted? Someone mentioned that they might be driven by poorly paid workers?

Some of them have a "phone home" feature - after being stuck a while they may be taken over by a human. This is likely to be a feature of many autonomous vehicles including ones occupied by humans.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#69

Post by bourgoin »

A couple of years ago, I was attacked by a Kiwi bot near a UC campus. This is my story.

The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge of its radius. In any case, my behavior must have triggered some pathfinding bug, because it turned and drove right into my legs, after which it stopped and sat stationary. Luckily they're small and move slowly so it wasn't a big deal, but that memory stuck with me. Articles about Tesla pathfinding issues always bring it back to the surface.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#70

Post by iso1631 »

steelframe wrote: post #40
throwawaynay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe they pity the students who are going to get cold pizza 2 hours late?

Maybe they should pity the human delivery workers who they are helping to put out of a job?

Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation, flung their wooden shoes, called 'sabots' into the machines to stop them. ...Hence the word 'sabotage'.
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