"Out of the company's first 80,000 deliveries the bots finished on campus, about 1,600 involved incidents of vandalism. At a cost of $2,500 per Kiwibot, the damage adds up quick."
""It's a shame to see a few people spoiling things for everyone else and damaging a new service for local people," a spokesperson for the robot's manufacturers, Starship Technologies, told the outlet."
""Stumbled across the perfect microcosm of downtown LA today: a high-tech autonomous delivery robot smeared with a pile of feces," he wrote."
"As more bots flood city streets, sentiments toward delivery robots seem to have changed very little. If anything, they've only gotten worse."
Since their introduction at UC Berkeley in 2020, delivery robots have encountered widespread vandalism and hostility. Kiwibot reported 1,600 incidents out of 80,000 deliveries. Recent events in Sheffield and Philadelphia show ongoing negative attitudes, with robots being spray-painted, kicked, and otherwise damaged. Incidents include a robot covered in feces in Los Angeles and others being tossed into bushes. The increase in delivery robots has not improved public sentiment, leading to concerns about their safety and operational viability.
Read at Futurism
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