Personal Delivery Robots: How Will Cities Manage Multiple, Automated, Logistics Fleets in Pedestrian Spaces?

Abstract

Small, highly automated devices are rapidly achieving the ability to perform services such as food, grocery or parcel delivery, sweeping, snow-ploughing, monitoring, and many other automatable tasks. These services are often performed in public spaces shared with pedestrians, bikes, and other active transportation users. The technology is sufficiently advanced – while still partially teleoperated – such that some firms are now in operational, paid service while several more, including some of the world’s largest logistics firms are expected to provide last-mile (to home) services at scale using these machines within the next short years. The industries innovating and monetizing these technologies are investing heavily and may be expected to make a significant impact in the urban areas in which they operate.

How might we prepare our cities for such robotic vehicles that would share public spaces with human-operated vehicles and pedestrians? How will vehicles from multiple vendors operate concurrently in these spaces? How can these vehicles be used to their greatest advantage within our cities? This entry addresses these questions and proposes a solution to manage sidewalk traffic, pedestrian rights, monetization, while furthering the efforts to create cities with smarter pedestrian and active transportation spaces.