A video posted to Twitter reported that a self-driving food delivery robot did not properly handle the yellow warning tape surrounding a Los Angeles crime scene as it passed the area.
And William Good, the owner of the "Film the Police L" Twitter account, which documents police activity in Los Angeles, stated that he was near Hollywood High School, an area where a shooting is suspected in the morning when he saw A food delivery robot rolls down the sidewalk, approaching the yellow police warning tape that identifies the crime scene.
I saw the robot coming and I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Judd told Gizmodo by phone. He explained that the robot kept trying to maneuver hard around the tape until the photographer raised the tape up to allow the robot to pass.
The robot then made its way through a high school crime scene, past a group of Los Angeles Police Department officers.
This robot is one of several working for Service Robotics, an independent company that spun off from Uber in 2021 after acquiring Postmates the previous year.
Uber Eats announced that it would begin testing autonomous delivery using SURF Robotics models in Los Angeles last May, but Judd was unable to confirm whether that particular bot was coming to deliver an order.
It was funny to watch the tiny autonomous robot roll straight into the accident area unchecked, but the accident shows how autonomous delivery companies still have a lot of work to do to get their fleet to behave prudently in these situations like humans and respect boundaries.
And as humanity continues to develop technology for self-driving cars and food delivery robots, the path to the successful integration of autonomous robots into our society - if at all - will be marred by accidents just like these.