From convenience to conflict, delivery robots are drawing mixed reactions in urban spaces.

In Center City, robots are delivering dinner—and debate. Uber Eats began rolling out food delivery bots last month, accelerating a trend that’s been picking up speed for years in urban environments. As these bots navigate busy sidewalks, they’re fueling both convenience and curiosity. Are they friend, foe or something in between? 

Temple Now spoke with robotics and psychology experts about the benefits and challenges as delivery robots and humans navigate how to coexist.

• Philip Dames is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Temple Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Lab
• Donald Hantula is an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience
• Lindsay Ouellette is an adjunct professor of statistics and a 2025 PhD graduate in social psychology with a focus on human-robot interaction; dissertation: “From Fiction to Friction: Abusing Autonomous Mobile Robots” 

Dames, Hantula and Ouellette are also part of Temple’s Robot Social Navigation Amongst Pedestrians (roboSNAP) research team.

Temple Now: When did food delivery robots first emerge, and what’s fueling their growth? 

Philip Dames: Robot delivery has been around for about 10 years, but growth is accelerating. It’s being driven by the high cost of “last-mile delivery,” and the rise of e-commerce that was fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then you add rapid advances in sensors, computing and software that have led to mass production and have made the technology far more affordable over the last decade. 

We often see robotics in what we call the “four d’s:” dull, dirty, dangerous or dear work. We see this with robots doing things like assembly lines and other preprogrammed, repetitive, fixed tasks, and now we’re starting to see robots automating things that are outside of these more highly controlled environments.  

Delivery robots fall into the autonomous mobile robot category. They are essentially the next phase of industrialization—moving from controlled factory settings into unpredictable public spaces where they must navigate weather, people, pets and traffic and all those other things out on the street. 

TN: How do delivery robots benefit businesses and customers?  

Dames: Delivery jobs may fall into the kind of “dull” work that often gets automated. There are also a shrinking number of people who are willing to engage in gig economy work that is known to provide lower wages and is often not sustainable long term for today’s cost of living. A shrinking labor market means that if we can automate some of the work, then customers can get their food, businesses can sell more stuff and it’s good for them. 

Robots can also help companies decrease delivery costs and their carbon footprints. For customers, robots can mean faster service, particularly when there aren’t enough human delivery drivers.  

TN: What challenges or risks have become most apparent as delivery robots become more common? 

Donald Hantula: Any time that new technology is introduced into the workplace, it does displace some jobs. It also creates others, and at times, it changes the roles. My favorite example of changing roles is what ATMs did to bank tellers. Everybody thought those jobs would disappear, but it was actually the opposite. Their roles changed from dispensing cash into those who handle more complex deposits and withdrawals and advising bank customers about the other products and services that were offered. 

Additionally, regulation of autonomous mobile robots and laws around them need to be more defined, especially around responsibility, ownership and safety. These robots can be fun and entertaining or a massive problem, depending on the environment. Cities weren’t designed for them: sidewalks already packed with people, bikes, scooters—now adding “little coolers on wheels.” They work fairly well in wide, controlled spaces—but in tight, crowded places, they can create problems. 

TN: How can we improve humans and robots’ coexistence?  

Dames: The rise of delivery robots parallels what happened with taxis and ride-sharing apps. Once you break the preexisting structure, it’s hard to go back. 

Robots need social intelligence, not just technical ability. When you see a robot in a hallway, it is usually in the middle because it can see both sides of the hallway with equal clarity. But the robot is not necessarily obeying those social rules to be on one side so that other people can pass it. From a pure robotics perspective, I understand why you would want the robot to be in the middle, but from a human perspective, it doesn’t make much sense.  

One of the biggest hurdles is teaching robots to follow unspoken social rules—like not blocking aisles or navigating shared spaces smoothly. Right now, they may act in ways that make sense technically but feel disruptive to people. So how we adjust these robots to be more predictable and less disruptive is going to be important for minimizing frustration with them. 

TN: The disruptiveness some people feel has sparked strong reactions in cities and public spaces like vandalism and abuse of robots. Why do people harm robots?  

Hantula: Vandalism did not start with autonomous robots delivering food. We have a long history of people vandalizing everything. People are going to vandalize stuff. It just sort of comes to the forefront when there’s some new thing in the world. Robot abuse mirrors human violence. It’s not a new behavior—just a new target.   

Lindsay Ouellette: Robot abuse is real and surprisingly human. What started as viral videos of people beating up these food delivery robots turned into a novel research area. My research identifies these categories of abuse, including kicking, hacking, graffiti, obstructing, filming for social media—or simply not helping, for example, if a robot is stuck. What I did in my research was build upon the preexisting categories by adding instrumental and moral violence to the classifications of abuse. 

Instrumental violence is defined by hurting the robot “as a means to an end” for money, status and attention, and moral violence, as in people kick a robot because they think it deserves it for moving slowly, blocking the path or malfunctioning.  

What I found is that instrumental violence reigned supreme. For example, people may say “that’s wrong, it’s not who I am,” but when offered $100, they’ll kick the robot. People were more willing to harm a robot for instrumental gain. This reinforces a core idea that the environment influences our behavior. People are not born “bad.” Rather, situations influence how we behave and act toward others, robots included.  

TN: What does the future look like? Are delivery robots a lasting shift or a passing trend? 

Ouellette: I think that there’s a practicality behind them, and when it comes to the future of robotics, I do think it’s going to be more things like delivery robots and factory robots. According to my research, food delivery robots are one of the highest selling types of robots that are out there globally. 

Right now, though, it’s the Wild West. Technology can do amazing things, but it can also create disruption and ethical dilemmas. The challenge is coexistence—how to integrate robots into society more peacefully. I’m interested in finding that balance. 

The only way around is through. So, if I want to try to make things better, I have to understand what’s happening. My hopeful, idealistic side looks at this as how do we harness this technology for the good of the community and the good of society so we can live better, more fulfilling lives?