Food delivery robot rolls through LA crime scene as confused cops look on | Hacker News Reader

Food delivery robot rolls through LA crime scene as confused cops look on

usatoday.com

109 pointsbelltaco60 comments

Someone move the tape to let it in the crime scene. Cops just looked like they had more pressing things to deal with. Seems like a non-story to me.

> Seems like a non-story to me.

Kinda. It’s interesting to see we let robots where others can’t go, even in mundane tasks like delivery.

In the reddit post about this someone told a story about how they crossed a crime scene like this to make a delivery.

In the NBC footage, I thought I heard someone joke, “what if it is a bomb”.

When the tech reaches a threshold of saturation and ubiquity, it becomes less a curiosity and more of, something else to look out for.

Welcome to our high tech cyber punk dystopia. Tent slums in the worlds richest cities, rampant opiate use and food delivery robots.

All we need is someone to start barcoding fentanyl zombies and it's a 1970s movie.

I think about this all the time and I'm surprised I'm present on the earth to view it.

What is a fentanyl zombie?

https://youtube.com/shorts/JxgCa_QOU0s?feature=share

https://youtube.com/shorts/Y7JCjb8Mmv8?feature=share

What is the evidence that fentanyl is the drug in use?

What evidence will convince you it's fentanyl?

Some sort of reporting that affirmatively associates the behavior with a specific compound such as arrests or health records. Arrest records would likely not include confounding factors such as mental health issues, which also can determine abnormal behaviors in dual diagnosis scenarios. Possibly recorded interviews with the people exhibiting the behaviors would also be acceptable

Anything less is an assumption based on rumor

Will you accept a description of the effects of fentanyl from a government website?

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-us...

"Mental effects Fentanyl causes: dizziness confusion going "on the nod" (being in and out of consciousness)

Physical effects

Besides strong pain relief, fentanyl produces effects such as: drowsiness slow breathing nausea and vomiting smaller (constricted) pupils itching or warm/hot sensation on the skin"

I think the mental effects cover what was shown in the videos provided by the other commenter.

Here is a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVtvp59xue4&t=884s&t=14m44s) of someone "nodding off" or doing the "Hastings Shuffle." There are two people being interviewed who said that's what they look like when they've taken heroin. They went on to describe taking fentanyl and almost dying. Fentanyl is an opioid like heroin but it's much more powerful. If you don't die or overdose, then you'll be shuffling around.

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgEdyvxwcvQ&t=5m45s) has two examples of people injecting drugs at a safe injection site and appearing to "nod off." One slumped over a chair around 5 m 50 seconds and another around 6 m 10 seconds.

edit to add another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ojeXgyAu0&t=2m8s this one is fucked up but shows someone injecting and then the after effects. They think it's heroin, but the narrator says it could be fentanyl and they can't know for sure. Around 3:30 is the after effects.

Probably not convincing because you don't really see what the drug they are using is and you don't see them stick the needle in their arm or press the plunger.

I don't have crime stats because they don't arrest people for drug possession or even giving it away for free where I am. (https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-department-de...)

There are lots of mental health problems and other contributing factors of people who use street drugs, including using drugs that aren't pure. We have coroners reports on deaths with fenatnyl and other drugs in the deceased. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marri... But that doesn't discuss the behavior. I don't think the behavior is solely attributable to fentanyl, but it does contribute to a fair bit of it since it's in so much of the supply.

Anyway, there is lots out there if you're interested in searching more.

The problem with descriptions being used as evidence is in your own statement. Fentanyl is a mu-opioid agonist just like heroin, morphine, oxycodone, and many other similar compounds. There is zero reason to believe that fentanyl in specific is the compound being used in those scenarios, especially with how common heroin is.

Okay, the coroners data said, "Preliminary data suggests that the proportion of illicit drug toxicity deaths for which illicit fentanyl was detected (alone or in combination with other drugs) was approximately 82% in 2022 and 86% in 2021. 2022 data will change as further toxicology results are received."

I'm sure none of this convinces you, and I'm sure nothing I type or show will convince you either.

I have already stated the the evidence that would convince me and you have not provided anything similar. The evidence that you have provided would not suffice in a research environment which is the standard that I use.

Coroner data is not useful in this case as deaths are not necessarily correlated with other behavioral abnormalities.

Since I'm not a trained researcher, I apologize for wasting your time.

You don't need to be a researcher to find interviews with people or to interview people exhibiting a behavior yourself

You don't need to be a researcher to find arrest records with behavioral descriptions and record of substances confiscated

Health records are different due to HIPAA, generally those are much harder to get your hands on even when deidentified

I think the team is already busy teaching their AI or whatever that when you have a yellow police tape (or otherwise heavy presence of armed officers or other [para]military), find an alternative route. This is how the self driving tech improves. And it's better that glitches like this happen with a small food delivery robot than with a AI controlled truck.

But consider this, that robot didn't get arrested, shot at, or otherwise brutalized by the law enforcement officers. And hopefully didn't cause too much confusion at the crime scene either as in preventing officers doing their job. So really, a non-story with win-win ending; or something like that.

Does that then become a hack to misdirect the robot? As a side note it also works on real people, a long time ago in a small town a friend and I redirected all the traffic on the main Street down a small side street after one too many on a Saturday night. Harmless and it seemed funny at the time.

> win-win ending; or something like that

Robots treated better than humans? What sort of -ism is this?

Most likely this doesnt use AI, but remote control by employees from south america.

>remote control by employees from south america

Whenever the topic of AI comes up, I always ask if it wouldn't be cheaper to set up shop in my country and pay people to do it in real time and call it AI.

Maybe they thought the robot was meant to deliver something to the crime scene? How familiar are people with those robots?

It's a story, just a light hearted one. And not even one mention of Skynet.

Maybe the robot was the perpetrator sent back by Skynet

Funny headline though

When I saw a video yesterday, I was surprised: IIUC, it's an emergency scene from a purported shooter, and they're letting something like a drone with a big box drive right into a cluster of several responding police officers?

In this case, even if they're already confident that the shooter is a hoax, and also somehow confident that the delivery bot is innocuous (e.g., the hoax wasn't to lure them there, like in some Hollywood story), I wonder whether it'd still be good practice to intercept the drone by the time it crosses the police tape?

And keep/get it away from people, and/or contain threats it might pose?

(The reason I ask is not to presume to know better about emergency scene safety than the people with training and experience in these things, since of course I don't. But knowing a bit about tech over the years has sensitized me not to assume that some risk that seems obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.)

Well, extend your argument to everyday life. A drone strolling along in public and highly populated spaces with a big box full of unknown contents...

Emergency scenes seem to be different context, with different probabilities and priorities. And they already have different protocols. How do those protocols evolve in light of changes like new technology availability?

Are these robots remote controlled?

Cos that driving sure looks like a human at a keyboard...

I assume maybe these delivery companies are using humans till their 'self drive' software is refined?

At least for Starship robots, the answer is yes. As I understand it, the way it works is that if the robots have any doubt about the safety of continuing, they stop and wait. If they have waited too long, they phone home and someone at the central office teleoperates them to safety, where they're in a position where they can continue autonomously.

The robots can avoid obstacles autonomously, queue up in long robot lines, and even cross the street by themselves when there are no cars.

This is also how "full self driving" cars will work, for as long as we live. Currently the cost race among car manufacturers is battery production, leading to enormous battery factories popping up.

The next one will be for massive sweatshops where car manufacturers hire people are on-call to steer a mercedes around a poorly placed traffic cone.

If this is the future, there is an interesting outcome...

To begin with, operators will control one/a few cars.

But eventually as many cars are deployed, it will instead make more sense for the operator to specialize on a particular city or street.

You might end up with the operator driving all cars down a particular street, directing each one around the poorly placed traffic cone.

Which doesn't look awfully different to a construction worker today directing traffic...

If you have enough cars travelling one specific bit of street that you can employ someone full-time to do it, you'll very quickly get enough data to remove that edge case.

I'm torn between "that's the best job in the world" and "worst job in the world"

Near the former for the first 30 minutes, near the latter for the next 30 years.

Commit a crime in such a way that when your lunch gets delivered soon after the robot has interfered with the evidence of your crime.

Stage food delivery at scene of crime so you can getaway inside the robot like in Flight of the Navigator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4v-dMfzp3E

Could a bomb disposal bot double as a delivery bot? Those things sit unused most of the time while it could be getting the coffee and donuts or making revenue for the city!

You mean bomb disposal and bomb delivery bot? It could handle both tasks, once it's already there... rented part-time by different customers, one the mafia the other the local police tipped by an anonymous bot...

not sure if you've seen a bomb disposal bot but they're often quite large, like riding mower large, and are pretty slow, and usually tethered instead of wireless. So not really a good crossover.

> not sure if you've seen a bomb disposal bot but they're often quite large, like riding mower large, and are pretty slow, and usually tethered instead of wireless. So not really a good crossover.

So you mean it could be improved and made cheaper by existing technology?

Both yes and no, they have smaller ones, but in some cases that's like saying "I'm going to run my 500 acre farm with this lawn tractor". It's big because bombs can be big and it needs lifting capacity. It also works in a variety of environments like water, fire, etc, sometimes they're hitting them with or using fire hoses from them. Tether is for several reasons including not running out of power or not losing connection while you're, you know, diffusing a bomb.

Sure, and the firefighters could bake the cakes!

Jokes aside, in the UK at least I'm not sure they actually have much down-time. They're only permanently staffed in denser areas - in others they have other jobs but are on-call for their fire & rescue duties.

This is one of the problems with automation. You can always find some drunk guy that does something stupid. But if you have dozens or hundreds of robots and something happens that they are not prepared for you get chaos.

Right now it is not a problem, thou, as it was just one robot.

Amazon Crime.

Saul Goodman is getting creative.

Amusing!

Anyone has info on this robot, as to how this little roller can cross safely?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m7bj/a-robot-delivery-star...

https://medium.com/kiwicampus/how-kiwi-empowers-students-in-...

Remote workers.

Roll on little dude!

In-n-out is worth crossing police lines, picket lines, maybe even enemy lines.

>maybe even enemy lines.

Russia has recently put a $15K bounty for capturing an automated battlefield delivery platform (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THeMIS) provided to Ukraine by Estonia. (in Russian https://lenta.ru/news/2022/09/04/robot/)

"In my client's defense, your honor, they were merely following essential protocol and delivering precious cargo. I now present exhibit A, the Double-Double — add mustard, add chopped chilies, add raw chopped onions — with a fry well done and a Neopolitan shake. Now, who here among us would deem such a prize unworthy of a little minor civil unrest?"

Very funny! imho

The last couple times I went to Las Vegas, I went to the In-n-Out outside Flamingo and was disappointed.

It's so hyped up, yet the burger is pretty meh and the fries were way underdone. Honestly I think the other burger chains make better food.

The Vegas in-n-out was one of the worst I’ve ever been, tbh.

Also I usually asked for “deep fried fries” which makes them cook longer.

It’s annoying that they have the “secret menu” that you need to know to get things to be the best.

one of these rolling through with the purpose of contaminating the scene would be interesting to see argued in courts....

Cyberpunk, but cute.

Begun the robot wars have.

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