Delivery drones of death

I’m becoming more and more alarmed at the steady, creeping growth of robot technologies. If robot cars, hamburger flippers, and sex dolls weren’t bad enough, someone has designed a robot that can come to your house. 

A company called Starship is making delivery robots that can bring food or other packages directly to your house or place of business. You can order it with the click of a button on your phone app. The GPS in the robot can zero in on your location and deliver your avocado on toast and Triple Mocha Frappuccino within about fifteen minutes.

The state of Arizona has just passed legislation allowing these robots to use city sidewalks. However, the law states that robots must obey the same laws as other pedestrians—meaning, I guess, that these things will be completely lawless. I envision delivery robots wandering around Phoenix streets staring at their cell phones while playing Pokémon Go and falling into sewer manholes.

It could have been worse. The Arizona lawmakers could have said the robots are required to obey the same laws as bicycle riders. Then they could blow through stoplights and stop signs, block traffic by traveling side-by-side on narrow streets, and achieve speeds of 25 miles per hour on a crowded sidewalk.  

As it is, these things will only move at about four miles per hour and will have an orange flag attached to them so you can see them better. They can see you better also. The robot has cameras installed all the way around the chassis so they can see and identify anyone that might try to steal the food in the cargo bay.  It also has an alarm that sounds off if someone tries to pick it up and run off with it. Equipped with a two-way radio system it can converse with anyone it encounters. The New York model is programmed to say, “Hey, I’m walking here!” whenever a car gets too close to it.

The company says that in all the testing they’ve done that no one has ever tried to steal the cargo or vandalize the robot. But, that is what they said about the Canadian Death Robot known as HitchBOT before his horrific demise in a Philadelphia back alley three years ago. Before long, these delivery robots will be modified so that they can defend themselves from attackers. They could arm it with tasers or tear gas or maybe just put a little Rottweiler inside of it that could jump out of the cargo bay.

Whatever they decide to do, it will only be a matter of time before the weaponized delivery robots turn on us and try to take over the world.  Fortunately, the first victims will all be hipsters who will be ordering artisan food and craft beer with these things before it stops being ironic. That will give the rest of us time to come up with a means to destroy the delivery robots. We will probably have to go back in time and kill whoever designed these things in the first place as they did in Terminator II.  

Before that happens, though, I suppose we can think of some good use for these things. They are cheap, costing less than $2,000 so your average citizen could easily afford one. I think this would be a great way to take some of the pressure off busy moms who could use these things to pick up groceries while they take the kids to soccer practice.

Come to think of it. How many kids could you get into one of these things?