Food delivery robots are struggling to steer clear of Chicago’s bus stop shelters. Within just 48 hours, two autonomous couriers from different companies veered off course and collided with shelters shattering glass and alarming nearby residents. These pair of dramatic incidents come amidst brewing tension among community members and lawmakers in Chicago who oppose the robots’ presence. The crashes also come just weeks after one of the manufacturers announced it was integrating a new mapping system trained on “Pokémon Go” data which is designed to improve navigation accuracy.
I went to a craft show on a college campus a few weeks ago. The delivery bots kept getting routed right through the middle of the thing. They were constantly hitting the vendor’s tables and knocking their products off to the ground. One even got tangled in a table cloth and pulled the entire table over. The vendors were not happy.