Writing the rules for robots in public
Engineers and city lawyers are testing delivery machines with slower speeds and stricter routes.
The trial corridor: pavements, crossings and one very patient bridge.
The delivery robot waits at the crossing. It waits correctly — behind the line, facing the signal, yielding to a pram — because waiting correctly is most of what the city's new robot code requires.
The trial covers twelve machines, three neighbourhoods and one thick rulebook written jointly by engineers and city lawyers. Speed is capped at a brisk walk. Pavements are shared by right, not by grace. Every machine carries insurance, a phone number, and a large red stop button.
Slow is a feature
The speed limit disappointed the operators and delighted everyone else. At walking pace the robots are furniture, not traffic; complaints in the trial zones fell to nearly zero within a month. “Nobody fears a thing that can't catch them,” the project lead says.
The rules that stuck
Three rules survived contact with reality unchanged: yield to everything living, publish every incident within 24 hours, and let any street opt out by petition. The opt-out has never been used — a statistic the lawyers quote the way engineers quote uptime.
Key points
- Twelve machines across three neighbourhoods under joint rulebook
- Speed capped at walking pace; insurance and stop button mandatory
- Any street may opt out by petition — none has
The trial expands to thirty machines in autumn, with the same rulebook and a longer leash. The crossing robot, for the record, crossed safely — behind an elderly man it had correctly identified as having right of way over everything.
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