Gwanggyo and other urban robotic labs allow us to grapple with the ongoing ‘infrastructuralisation of robotically augmented cities’ (While et al., 2021, p. 781), as delivery robots are woven into the urban landscapes and humans and robots cohabit and evolve together. I visited Gwanggyo three times in the summer of 2022 to observe Dilly Drives in action. On my first visit in late June, I failed to meet any robots and learned from an ice cream store that they were not working on weekends during the testbed period, during which robot deliveries were free of charge. But I could trace signs of robot presence in the area. Across the Alleyway, Baemin put up notices of robot delivery: ‘Delivery Robot Dilly is self-driving in the Alleyway’ with a photo of Dilly saying, ‘Please don’t be frightened when you see me crossing the road’; in its advertisement in a store, Dilly is holding a food bag and saying: ‘Dilly will be taking this to you’. Together these gave a friendly warning to Alleyway visitors who were unlikely to be familiar with such technology.
Ten days later, I made a second visit at around lunchtime on a weekday. Contrary to my expectations, it was not easy to chance upon a delivery robot moving about in the large Alleyway.
In one of many alleyways there, I discovered the Dilly Station [see Figure 1] where a few machines looking like vacuum cleaners were standing by for dispatch. After a few minutes, a young man wearing a green neon vest came over and took one of them. On the back of his vest was printed “Baemin Robot”. The robot was moving very slowly and stopped at a snack bar. The man with the vest stepped back to leave the robot alone to make the interaction free of human contact. Someone from the snack bar came out immediately and put two plastic bags into two different compartments inside the robot. The robot then started moving towards the iPark. The human guardian accompanied the robot all the way through. He occasionally did some operations using his phone and cleared the way for the robot by removing unexpected obstacles. (Fieldnotes, July 5, 2022)
The above observation illustrates the kinds of (dis)connections and interactions that are being made with the deployment of delivery robots. The robot facilitated food delivery free of human contact, thanks to the action of the human guardian pretending not to be present. The accompanying human removing obstacles getting in the robot’s way hints at the spatial changes anticipated if robotic navigation is to be frictionless.
Figure 1. Dilly on standby and in action: five Dilly Drive robots are parked at the Dilly Station after work (above); Dilly crossing the road with the Operator walking in front of the robot (below). Photographs by Noel Chung, 2022.
Having learned that non-residents can also use the service from the designated outdoor spaces such as a playground inside the iPark, I made another visit to test-order something myself using the Robot Delivery service and to speak to the human guardians (Kyujin and Jihyun). This time, with permission from Dilly’s human guardian (whose official title is ‘Operator’), I was able to follow the robot (and the Operator Kyujin) throughout the entire delivery journey from the Dilly Station to the restaurant, and then to the iPark. There were several Operators on-site to match the number of robots—normally four to six robots operated at once, according to Operator Jihyun. Kyujin, the Operator whom I followed explained to me that Dilly robots are self-driving, connected to the Control Centre, but must be accompanied by a human to comply with the regulations. He added that their slow movement was due to the speed limit set by the authority.
While the Dilly was waiting alone in front of a restaurant, a passer-by investigated each side of the Dilly. He gave it a little kick and went off. The Operator didn’t notice it because he was taking a short break on a bench and intent on his phone. … The robot handled the fairly steep road leading to the iPark very well, albeit slowly. It passed through the main gate of the building and made a turn to catch the elevator. A resident inside the elevator held the door open with a smile and a hand sign of “come in” as the robot slowly entered … The elevator stopped at the destination floor, but the robot struggled to get through its doors. The Operator looked embarrassed by my witnessing the robot failing to leave the elevator. I made no comment. He explained that the malfunction was caused by the network issue common in tall buildings combined with the high temperature of the robot, which in summer can reach 70 degrees Celsius. (Fieldnotes, July 19, 2022)
This short fieldnote extract portrays how a Dilly Drive interacts with various other entities, including people, the built environment, communication infrastructures, and the weather. In particular, it captures two very different human–robot encounters; a passer-by (non-user) kicking the robot and a resident (user or potential user) treating the robot as a co-resident. Operator Jihyun noted that Baemin was not concerned much about possible harassment towards robots, since each robot is effectively a moving CCTV, equipped with cameras and sensors. The passer-by in my fieldnote seemed to have kicked the Dilly not to break it but merely to induce a reaction. Studies on human–robot social interaction find that passers-by tend to perceive sidewalk robots as quasi-social agents (partly owing to their likeable design), as demonstrated by people helping out Starship delivery robots stuck in the snow in Tallinn, Estonia (Dobrosovestnova et al., 2022). Furthermore, as urban robots of various types become commonplace, they will cease to appeal even to those who are aggressively inquisitive.
References:
Dobrosovestnova, A., Schwaninger, I., & Weiss, A. (2022). With a little help of humans. An exploratory study of delivery robots stuck in snow. 2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 1023–1029. https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900588