{"id":1322,"date":"2019-04-06T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2019-04-01T20:18:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T00:18:07","slug":"robots-in-space-sharing-our-world-with-autonomous-delivery-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/robots-in-space-sharing-our-world-with-autonomous-delivery-vehicles\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots in Space: Sharing Our World with Autonomous Delivery Vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Mason Marks<\/p><\/div>\n

Kristen Thomasen<\/a> will lead a discussion of Mason Marks<\/a>‘s Robots in Space: Sharing Our World with Autonomous Delivery Vehicles<\/a><\/em><\/strong> on Friday, April 12, at 3:30 p.m. at \u00a0#werobot 2019.<\/p>\n

Industrial robots originated in mid-Twentieth Century factories where they increased the efficiency of manufacturing. Their implementation was an extension of earlier industrial automation such as\u202fthe introduction of Henry Ford\u2019s mechanized assembly line in 1913. In Ford\u2019s assembly line, a rope-and-pully system advanced each vehicle from one worker to the next allowing each worker to remain stationary.Half a century later,\u202fin 1961, the first robotic arm, created by Unimate, was introduced to auto manufacturing, which further increased efficiency.\u202fMore recently, following advancements in artificial intelligence and sensor technology, industrial robots have acquired greater autonomy and transformed the logistics and delivery industries.\u202fLike Ford\u2019s assembly line, and Unimate\u2019s robotic arm, Amazon\u2019s fulfillment center robots, originally designed by Kiva Robotics, reduced the daily steps workers must take. Instead of walking through aisles to stock warehouse shelves or retrieve products for distribution, workers remain stationary, and the robots bring the products to them.\u202fToday, with even greater autonomy than their predecessors, robots are migrating out of factories, warehouses, and fulfillment centers and into neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and skies. The technological advancements that allowed robots to automate private industrial spaces, such as machine learning and sophisticated sensors, now enable autonomous delivery robots (ADVs) to travel independently in the outside world and deliver packages, meals, groceries, and other retail purchases to people\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kristen Thomasen<\/p><\/div>\n

This article focuses on the evolution of ADVs used for \u201clast-mile delivery,\u201d the final step of the delivery process that ends at the customer\u2019s door. It breaks ADVs down into four different categories: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or \u201cdrones\u201d); self-driving cars; autonomous delivery pods; and sidewalk delivery robots, which are sometimes called personal delivery robots (PDRs). The article describes the risks and benefits of deploying ADVs for last-mile delivery and analyzes the laws and federal agencies that regulate them. Last mile delivery is generally thought to be \u201cthe most expensive and time-consuming part of the shipping process\u201d because it is the most personalized and unpredictable. Industry estimates suggest that last-mile delivery can account for up to 53 percent of total shipping costs. ADV manufacturers claim they can reduce delivery time, increase efficiency, cut costs, improve the consumer experience, decrease traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions, assist seniors and people with disabilities who may have decreased mobility, and democratize access to logistics and delivery resources for small businesses allowing them to compete with large corporations. Critics claim ADVs may negatively impact public health by encouraging inactivity, obstructing roads and sidewalks and impairing the mobility of seniors and people with disabilities, and endangering public safety due to their potential to collide with people who are not agile enough to get out of the way. ADVs may also reduce the need for human delivery workers, cause noise pollution, violate people\u2019s privacy, and represent the increasing privatization of public spaces such as sidewalks. Though all ADVs will be discussed, my focus is primarily on sidewalk delivery robots because they are the newest and fastest growing segment of the ADV industry, and they face the fewest legal and regulatory hurdles. Particular attention will be paid to the differences between the laws that regulate sidewalk delivery robots and the laws that govern other types of ADVs. The article concludes by drawing lessons from the regulation of UAVs and self-driving cars to propose legislation to regulate sidewalk delivery robots that will increase their safety and utility while limiting the privatization of public spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kristen Thomasen will lead a discussion of Mason Marks‘s Robots in Space: Sharing Our World with Autonomous Delivery Vehicles on Friday, April 12, at 3:30 p.m. at \u00a0#werobot 2019. Industrial robots originated in mid-Twentieth Century factories where they increased the efficiency of manufacturing. Their implementation was an extension of earlier industrial automation such as\u202fthe introduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1334,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions\/1334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robots.law.miami.edu\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}