NAVER 1784, described by Kyungmin at Baemin Robotics Lab as ‘the utopia for indoor delivery robots’ during the interview, demonstrates how humans and robots might co-exist in shared robotised space. NAVER 1784 is the second headquarters of the Korean tech giant Naver, which opened as the world’s first robot-friendly building in 2022. The whole building serves as a testbed where engineers and designers of NAVER LABS cohabit with their new technologies, including 100 delivery robots, which evolve every day through live experiments (Wilson, 2022). These robots, named Rookie, roam around the floors using the robot-exclusive Roboport or human elevators to ferry coffee, lunch boxes, and documents. They are brainless, controlled by Naver’s cloud system, powered by 5G and digital twin technology. At the centre of the building’s design are the interactions between humans, robots, and architecture, particularly the integration between robots and the building’s architecture (Figure 1) (NAVER LABS, 2022).
Figure 1. NAVER 1784, a robot-friendly building: NAVER 1784’s public promotional videos showcase the movement of robots and humans in the shared space. Image from NAVER LABS, 2022.
As advocated by the designers of NAVER 1784, rather than a simple replacement of humans with robots, robotics is increasingly about ‘new forms of human-robotic co-evolution and hybrid augmentation’ (While et al., 2021, p. 771). Similarly, Sumartojo and Lugli (2022) emphasise the emergent aspect of robotic capabilities, entangled with the collaborating human bodies and contingent on a dynamic environment. This echoes Nagenborg (2020), who considers the co-shaping of space and human–robot interaction, where the design of urban spaces affects the way that humans and robots collaborate, which in turn is generative of space. According to Kyungmin, Baemin does not expect robots to completely replace human couriers. Instead, robots will ‘supplement’ where human couriers are constrained. For example, robots can be sent to apartments that ban motorbike riders and places avoided by human couriers, such as high-rise buildings (Chung, 2024). Robots are resilient to inclement weather conditions. For the delivery platform, heavy rain and snow have been among the biggest frictions that slow it down or may even cause a complete standstill. Kyungmin noted that robots will help maintain the ‘quality of service’, i.e. delivery by the estimated time, while also protecting human couriers from the risk of accidents. She stressed that in fact, the initial motivation for Bongjin Kim, the founder of Baemin, to invest in robotics was to protect its couriers from hazardous working conditions, such as riding in the rain.
One of the promotional videos from Baemin Robot Dilly shows a human courier and a Dilly Tower collaborating on a single delivery task (Figure 2) (Baemin Robot Dilly, 2022). In the video, the voice-over calls it a ‘teamplay’, where a human courier and a Dilly robot hand over the duty at the interface of outdoors and indoors. Most couriers whom I interviewed welcomed the handover before the elevator. However, Minsu, a part-time e-bike courier, appeared fatigued as he speculated on how it would work in practice:
What if the robot is carrying out another delivery when I arrive? Wouldn’t it be me again who does the waiting for the robot to come down? … If it’s as simple as passing the food to the reception staff for them to take care of the rest and I leave, it’s good. But I guess the app will ask me, like, “Please confirm if it’s Robot Delivery”, then I confirm the order number, it would then ask, “Did you place food securely?”, “Please take a photo”, etc. I’d have to click and click. [The photo would be required] because, in case the customer complains about the food coming to grief, like the soup or drink being spilt because the robot encountered a bump or something on its way, even though I made sure to place it safely inside it. (Minsu, part-time e-bike courier working with Baemin)
Figure 2. ‘A teamplay’: in the video, a human courier is putting a food package in the robot at the apartment gate. It features the indoor-only model Dilly Tower. Image from Baemin Robot Dilly, 2022.
At the same time, according to the interviews with the Baemin and Coupang representatives, securing workers as they respond to fluctuating demand is considered to be the biggest ‘problem’ for on-demand mobility platforms (cf. Rossiter, 2017, p. 201). Human couriers are expensive, picky, vulnerable to accidents and weather, and prone to ‘human errors’. The deployment of robots is believed to address these human frictions, if they, while not perfect, become a little more precise, faster, and cheaper than humans. While it might seem that Baemin maintains two distinct views towards human couriers: as subjects of care and sources of friction, they collide in the drive to develop robots, i.e. human vulnerability becomes a friction. As Weiqiang Lin (2022) claims, reducing dependence on vulnerable humans through automation and robotics is essential for making logistics infrastructure more resilient. He further argues that the technologies regarded as disciplining or replacing workers are now framed as a solution for ‘keeping workers safe …, while keeping the wheels of logistics turning’ (Lin, 2022, p. 470). Then the pursuit of fluid logistics through robotics results in side-lining human workers who are destined to cause frictions. If Baemin’s approach to the integration of human labour and robot operation is predicated on humans as friction, it raises the question of whether the spaces shaped on this premise will be co-liveable for both humans and robots.
Technologists often view progress driven by technology as inevitable, as captured in Kyungmin’s comment below, which exhibits some contradictions with her earlier remark about robots only supplementing rather than replacing humans:
Rickshaws were replaced by horse-powered carriages, then by trains. After taxis, Uber came, and self-driving cars would replace drivers … I often take kiosks as an example. People were sceptical and negative about kiosks … kiosks would steal human jobs and would be bad for those digitally excluded … But it only took 2–3 years for kiosks to become mainstream. The main driving force was the massive drop in cost … [With kiosks] the errors in orders are eliminated … help minimise human errors … I’m seeing the same for robots … Our serving robots [called Dilly Plate] when they first came out, trembled and stumbled over things … but those problems were fixed continuously, very quickly … by making the wheels bigger … [Problems] were addressed so quickly, and the serving robot market took off … and the user feedback [from restaurant owners] turned positive … So I simply take this as a reasonable change. Technology will become better … and cheaper … inevitably making robots widespread … it will just happen. … Look, we no longer ride in rickshaws, do we? (Kyungmin, Baemin Robotics Lab)
While Dilly technology and the associated infrastructures still need much development, Baemin anticipates that, once in use in the wild, they will improve and change rapidly through user feedback, as experienced with the deployment of their serving robot Dilly Plate. Active public and private investments in technology, supportive government policy, and rising customer demand all signal that delivery robots will be moving about in many neighbourhoods very soon, as Baemin couriers and dockless bikes did. In my future posts, I will discuss what kind of urban space Seoul and other cities may be turning into as they prioritise frictionless movement and the enabling technology, what may be lost along the way, and what alternatives should be sought.
References:
Baemin Robot Dilly (Director). (2022, February 7). [로봇배달서비스] 라이더가 잘 이용할까요? [[Robot Delivery Service] Will riders make good use of them?] [Video]. https://youtu.be/h2FjF9dl0P0?si=ejzgsTv2dVf1VeJm
Chung, N. (2024). Connected, programmed, immobilised: A mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul. Mobilities, 19(4), 573–592. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2024.2327845
Lin, W. (2022). Automated infrastructure: COVID-19 and the shifting geographies of supply chain capitalism. Progress in Human Geography, 46(2), 463–483. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211038718
Nagenborg, M. (2020). Urban robotics and responsible urban innovation. Ethics and Information Technology, 22(4), 345–355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9446-8
NAVER LABS (Director). (2022, April 14). 네이버는 왜 제2사옥 1784를 지었을까요? [Why did Naver build the second headquarters 1784?] [Video]. https://youtu.be/WG7JHLfClEo?si=x0ISmdurWHzY-FXv
Rossiter, N. (2017). Imperial infrastructures and Asia beyond Asia: Data centres, state formation and the territoriality of logistical media. The Fibreculture Journal, 29. https://doi.org/10.15307/fcj.29.220.2017
Sumartojo, S., & Lugli, D. (2022). Lively robots: Robotic technologies in COVID-19. Social & Cultural Geography, 23(9), 1220–1237. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2021.1921245
While, A. H., Marvin, S., & Kovacic, M. (2021). Urban robotic experimentation: San Francisco, Tokyo and Dubai. Urban Studies, 58(4), 769–786. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020917790
Wilson, M. (2022, May 24). This futuristic office was designed for 5,000 people—And 100 robot coworkers. FastCompany. https://www.fastcompany.com/90754724/this-futuristic-office-was-designed-for-5000-people-and-100-robot-coworkers