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Comment by r_klancer | Hacker News Reader

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 be lifted up and over the curb--trash cans, outdoor seating, carelessly parked scooters...)

And if I ever came up behind one put-putting along in a bike lane I'm not sure what I would do but I like to believe it wouldn't technically be illegal.

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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.

Don't underestimate the option of "if the cost of making the old infrastructure hostile to other users is even less"..

Well, the tide has been turning in many cities towards building more human-scale infrastructure by improving walkability and protected lanes for bikees/scooters etc. Delivery bots have a severe risk of wrecking the "flow" of sidewalks and bike lanes by being slow or just behaving robotically instead of like a person.

(Side comment/why I'm interested: I finally have bandwidth for civid engagement and I decided I'd like to work on helping my already cycling-friendly city enact policies to encourage food delivery services to use bike delivery, as part of its upcoming bike network plan.)

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.

Stanford has a pneumatic tube system for lab samples and it's several miles long and you can tour it!

https://sm.stanford.edu/archive/stanmed/2010summer/article4....

I would abuse the FUCK out of a burrito delivery pneumatic tube system to my house and would become orca fat.

There was a good "how its made" out there that showed a company that sells them for hospitals and etc.

It was cool to see how the various intersections and etc worked.

I cannot seem to find the right words to google, but you’d enjoy reading about (Chicago maybe?) a city that had a long rotating pipe running under the city. Instead of using electricity, or maybe prior to electricity, factories could attach a strap to the pipe to power machines.

JFYI:

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneumess.h...

You mean like the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel? https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

In Moscow there are such robot deliver post, where traffic more complicated than in campus, I think couple years and they are completely replace human delivery

At my campus, these devices cross public streets. They are scurrying around quite a bit, so it seems they are being used productively.

These little guys or very similar ones wander the sidewalks of Mountain View freely.

Interesting, I'm sure somebody has made a Youtube video of them. Only been to MV once and that was before these were around.

(EDIT: of course, there's also an East Coast/West Coast, or at least an old city/new city issue here. Based on your experience, can you imagine them working in NYC?)

I assume such robots would get murdered/mugged in NYC, they're not appropriate for busy sidewalks and are about as conducive to other people as an elderly person on the sidewalk using a walker (without the human understanding of "this person is a bit inconvenient, but they have a right to be here")

Mountain View is a pretty relaxed suburb kind of vibe with closely spaced residences and lots of mostly empty sidewalks.

A snapshot of one in the wild:

https://imgur.com/a/hLbmRkB

At least for the Starship bots that we have on my campus, they can go up and down curbs. But they will go down very narrow sidewalks where students have to get off the sidewalk to avoid them

Can't these go anywhere that a person in a wheelchair can go? And doesn't the ADA already make sure that a person in a wheelchair can go anywhere?

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