this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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How fucking hard is it to put a $2 ultrasonic distance sensor on the front. I built robots when I was a kid that wouldn't do this.
This has been solved for 50 years FFS. Yet here we are with techbros thinking cameras can solve everything.
($2 * number of robots * labor cost to install one * labor cost to update and integrate) > (cost of settling potential lawsuit)
publicly traded companies are actually super predictable
Flip your local bots. Or harvest them for parts aand free snacks, if youre extra cool.
These bots can be helpful for the elderly or those with disabilities. It's probably more effective to legislate them at the municipal level.
You don't actually care about that. A year or so ago i had to get knee surgery, was walking with a cane. These things were a menace. Almost knocked me over every time they passed, including towards traffic while crossing the street. I coulf have died. Know a guy whos chairbound. Hates how they hog the sidewalk and cant be negotiated with.
Disabled people are not your fucking pawns, techbro.
I didn't intend for it to sound like that, and reading my comment again I see that I should have expanded on it further. I'm hoping my posting history can show where I stand on issues like this.
What I should have said was that delivery services can be helpful for the elderly or those with disabilities, and that legislation on delivery services can help us improve access to those without the harms of these current robots.
For what it's worth, we don't have these robots where I am, so I didn't know how bad it was. In person, I've only seen a few that were sitting around our university plaza last fall. I looked online, and it looks like we don't currently have any here. I will keep what you've mentioned in mind when talking about these bots moving forward, especially if our local politicians are going to be deciding on them in the near future.
To expand on where my thinking was coming from, I have read first person accounts from people who can't leave their homes easily, and also how existing delivery programs are helpful but don't have the capacity to meet everyone that needs it: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/seniors-grocery-app-delivery-anjel-vancouver-1.4938035
Often with these discussions, automation is brought up as a way to bridge the gaps that current public funding can't fulfill.
I also recently read about how some cities have a thriving bike/scooter sharing program, while others are suffering from mismanagement, excessive prices, and chaos; and how it came down to whether the programs were started as a public project or if they were led by tech companies. So in my earlier comment, I was tying information to this story and saying that regulated and/or publicly managed delivery options might be a better thing to focus energy on
https://bikehub.ca/about-us/news/bike-share-dilemma-why-metro-vancouver-needs-regional-bike-share-system