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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

#251

Post by winkeltripel »

josephcsible wrote: post #100
netsharc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."

So "someone" thinks it's okay to vandalize other people's property just because the last person to use it didn't put it away right?

The company which owns the scooter is responsible for the location of the scooter. They choose to let users leave scooters in shitty locations. They invite vigilant responses from other sidewalk users.

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

#252

Post by erulabs »

agumonkey wrote: post #232
bourgoin wrote: post #69

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…

I don't know why they don't parametrize momentum with certainty. In any confusing situation, go into ultra slow environment scanning and when confidence increases, allow for a bit more.. rinse / repeat.

Tesla does exactly this and it gives rise to the phantom breaking problem. Still seems like a good solution for a small bot with no passengers

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

#253

Post by lm28469 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #239
lm28469 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance is bliss I guess. Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money (and usually not pay tax in said country) rubs me the wrong way to be honest. Not talking about the fact that users don't give two shits about where they park: in front of my building door, in the middle of the sidewalk used by old people / pregnant women, in the middle of the bicycle path Then we can talk about the newspeak term…

>Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money That's what the infrastructure is there for. To be used. The food you ate today was probably transported on the interstate. The rest of what you said comes off to me like the ancient Greeks complaining books make you not have to memorize everything. Technology marches on and things become more convenient.

> That's what the infrastructure is there for. To be used.

By anyone who decides to ? With no regulations ? Nice, I'll open a BBQ stand in the middle of the crossroad next to my building then.

Stopping for half a second to wonder where we're all collectively going might be a tiny bit more useful that what you insinuate, but I guess that makes me a turbo boomer.

You seem to think that every new technology is by default "progress" and we should accept progress, because why not, hence every new technology should be accepted. I assume you're smart enough to see how that argument doesn't hold water.

Technology doesn't just automagically happen, people make it happen, people with opinions, opinions which might not be aligned with other people's opinions and should be discussed.

> things become more convenient.

For who ? Not for the old woman with a cane who has to walk on the road to avoid the scooter on the sidewalk. Not for the "juicer" working all night to charge your e scooter for a few $. Not for the mom and pops shop who have to buy/rent/license amazon (or whoever) bots to deliver their food to customers through some third party app which takes a cut.

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

#254

Post by lnsru »

1over137 wrote: post #244
Kaze404 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.

Are scooters more dangerous than cars? No. But you've internalized the 1.4 million yearly global deaths from car crashes as "normal".

Yes they are. Cars are separated from pedestrians. Scooters and e-bikes aren’t. There is always some jerk with scooter trying to push through the cyclists on the bike lane or show his driving skills between pedestrians when I go to the office.

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

#255

Post by Freak_NL »

Robotbeat wrote: post #201
Freak_NL wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some vandalism will always happen, but the key seems to lie in making such an amenity loved by the people rather than forced upon them by faceless and unapproachable corporations.

That’s kind of subjective, isn’t it? A lot of people don’t feel threatened by businesses but instead feel threatened by a faceless and unapproachable government bureaucracy. See the DMV. When anti-business or anti-government ideology gives moral license to antisocial behavior, nothing is gonna work out for you.

It depends on how far the relation between citizen and government has deteriorated, and is certainly something to take into account. A practical example is the mayor of Manchester asking people not to apply the same destructive tactic to the new municipal bicycle plan¹. In Manchester the memory of the invasion of Chinese rent-a-bikes is still fresh, so the new plan will have to work at not being unapproachable and providing an asset to the city rather than a service for the few.

And it's not just the potential vandal (or activists) who affect the balance. If someone were to molest one of the unasked for app-hireable mopeds cluttering the sidewalk in my Dutch town, I wouldn't bother reporting it (in fact, I'd probably cheer them on). If someone did this to bicycles for hire part of a municipally managed plan (for which I can hold the council accountable as a voter, and whom I can address with complaints or suggestions for improvement) with fixed parking areas rather than devil-may-care-anywhere-on-the-sidewalk-parking, I would act differently.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/10/andy-burnham...

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

#256

Post by ctoth »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #83
Accacin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a minor inconvenience for cleaner air in your neighbourhood? Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in the way. Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much greater effort to park them correctly.

That's still very dismissive of anyone using the sidewalks. Good for you that you pick up someone else's shit, but it's not a solution. These companies should take responsibility and fix the problem.

I keep seeing people say "these companies" when the actual problem is the people who ride the scooters. Maybe your problem is with people in general? It doesn't feel super great to internalize, but if the problem keeps happening with different people riding the scooters then I think we can conclude that your anger is misplaced. Call out people you see misusing the infrastructure, don't destroy the infrastructure for everyone.

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

#257

Post by chillingeffect »

agumonkey wrote: post #232
bourgoin wrote: post #69

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…

I don't know why they don't parametrize momentum with certainty. In any confusing situation, go into ultra slow environment scanning and when confidence increases, allow for a bit more.. rinse / repeat.

All I can say without breaking agreements is that these are products, not ideal models of conceptual engineering. They're not created by people who like the world and want it to be a better place. They're created by people with lots of money who want a lot more. They've found an avenue for this by persuading other wealthy, greedy people to give them a lot of money and promising they can give them more back. They'll do this by persuading everyday people to not do things like produce, prepare, and transfer food themselves and instead pay money for these robots to do it.

These robots are minimum viable products toward moving capital around, not meeting user requirements or demonstrating great ideas. Hurting a few people in the process is part of the equation. Getting anyone to care about $cool_algorithm is not part of the equation. Getting people addicted to the convenience is part of the equation. Getting things to market as blindingly fast as possible so the capital moves before feedback from the field arrives is paramount.

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

#258

Post by throwhauser »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #159
jakub_g wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "security robots" for the uninitiated?

This is one I've seen in the wild. The K5 rocket-shaped model is heavy, 400 lbs (180 kg) https://www.knightscope.com/

What does it do that can't be accomplished with something the size of a remote controlled car?

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

#259

Post by InitialLastName »

Freak_NL wrote: post #171
Robotbeat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With these scooters, bicycles, mopeds for rent; and delivery robots it's also a form of not very nice but justifiable resistance in lieu of better ways. Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this was not illegal. Several companies…

> Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too.

Tell that to the rideshare companies whose drivers crowd the streets of cities, circulating while they stare at their phones waiting for a passenger (and leaving bottles of human waste everywhere).

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

#260

Post by jimmaswell »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #222
jimmaswell wrote: post #199

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

Why should scooter companies and robots be allowed to be rude to humans? We live in civil society and electronic things made by companies have no more right to the sidewalk than anyone else. Is it an 'anti-techbro luddite mindset' or are unattended electronic devices being bad citizens? I would treat any other jerk on the street the same way.

Maybe we need bigger sidewalks. This is historically how progress always happens, companies come up with something people want to take advantage of in the public space, then after the dust settles we accommodate it in an efficient way, like how NYC was a jungle of overhead wires for some time. The solution wasn't to ban electricity and telephones, it was to accommodate the need by investing in underground infrastructure.
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