Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that’s what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center in Osaka in 2015. A group of kids antagonized the robot, forcing the researchers to program an algorithm that would give the bot the agency to evade abuse. That’s just one example of challenging social interactions between humans and robots, and one that technologists have almost certainly considered when building and designing delivery bots.
Including the folks at Amazon: This week, the e-commerce behemoth dropped a web page for Scout, its new delivery robot. For now, Scout’s impact is small. The six-wheeled delivery bot is only piloting in Snohomish County, Washington, and only with Prime customers who request short-term delivery. But anything Amazon does has the potential to fundamentally disrupt shipping (not to mention a whole slew of eager startups that have been building their own automated delivery solutions). On this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, WIRED’s Arielle Pardes and Matt Simon deconstruct Scout and talk about the inevitable challenges that arise when you let a robot roam the sidewalks alongside humans and animals.
