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Vancouver councillors have voted to approve a six-month pilot program that would see food delivery robots on some neighbourhood sidewalks starting this fall.
Serve Robotics, a U.S.-based company, will run the program in the downtown and Kitsilano neighbourhoods — with the firm’s robots already operating in U.S. cities like Los Angeles.
Those in favour of the robots say that they would reduce emissions, given they’re electrically powered, and help the city embrace innovation and new technology.
An opposition councillor and a business professor, however, say there needs to be proper oversight of the robots — especially when it comes to their impact on pedestrians, existing delivery workers and people with disabilities.
ABC Coun. Mike Klassen, who proposed the motion that was passed by Vancouver councillors on Wednesday, argued the robots represented a “last mile” delivery approach.
“It doesn’t necessarily replace food delivery that’s already happening through vehicles and potentially on bicycles, but it’s a way of doing something that’s automated and hopefully more affordable in the long run as well,” he said.
Klassen’s motion calls on city staff to work with the province — which has ultimate jurisdiction over the use of sidewalks and streets in B.C. — and monitor the pilot program to inform future city policies.
The councillor said the Kitsilano and downtown neighbourhoods were chosen for the pilot because they have dense forms of housing, so the distance for the robots to travel would be shorter.
Proponents claim energy efficiency
Ali Kashani, the CEO of Serve Robotics, told CBC News the company’s robots have been operating in L.A. since 2019.
Kashani, who immigrated to Vancouver when he was 19, said the company had already trialled the technology for two weeks at a Vancouver Pizza Hut in 2022, but was now looking forward to the wider pilot program.
Food delivery service Skip, formerly SkipTheDishes, has partnered with a Waterloo-based robotics company to offer autonomous robot delivery services. CBC’s Michelle Song has more on the three-month pilot project.
The CEO argued that most food delivery trips are made in cars, and it was inefficient for small amounts of food to travel that way.
“Our robots have about 3,000 times less kinetic energy than a car, which means they just don’t pose the same kind of safety risk [as] a car does,” he added.
He also said that, while the robots largely operate on their own and navigate using sensors, they can ask a human operator to step in if they detect a situation that they don’t know how to handle.
Coun. Peter Meiszner, who is also with the ABC slate, said the city took years to allow ride hailing and e-scooters — both services that other major cities had implemented successfully already.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake again with another technology that I think is really going to improve people’s lives and improve our city,” he said.
Concern for sidewalk users
OneCity Coun. Lucy Maloney said the experience of delivery robots in other cities hasn’t been universally positive.
She pointed to Toronto, which banned food delivery robots over them presenting a hazard to people with limited vision and mobility challenges.
“They can block pathways and curb cuts, and there have been significant near-misses between robots and pedestrians in other cities, often with robots at fault,” she told council.
“They pose risks of collision-related injuries, particularly to children who may suffer head or torso trauma.”
Maloney argued that proceeding with the pilot program without first considering its implications for people with disabilities could open up the city to legal liability.
Werner Antweiler, an economics professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, said officials need to ensure that the machines “actually are good citizens” and that companies are able to manage the inevitable conflicts that occur between speeding robots and pedestrians.
“These are challenges that are very practical, and that means the the company needs to follow our rules — and we should set the rules, and not the company that wants to use it,” he said.
Antweiler added that artificial intelligence solutions like delivery robots were ultimately about automation, and could potentially displace entry-level jobs like food delivery work.
“That is a broader societal question — to what extent that impacts our economy, but also our social fabric,” he said.
In B.C., the provincial Motor Vehicle Act would govern how exactly “micro-utility devices” like delivery robots would operate.
A spokesperson for B.C.’s Transportation Ministry said that micro-utility devices are those intended to deliver goods or provide services, rather than transport people — and the province was “monitoring developments” in the area.
“The [province] would need to develop and approve new regulations for these devices to operate in B.C.,” the spokesperson wrote.
“This would include developing rules to address where the devices could operate, maximum speeds, size and weight limits and other safety requirements.”
