Small, wheeled delivery robots have quietly become one of the most widespread robots urban dwellers can encounter in public space. Rolling along sidewalks to drop off groceries and takeout, they are promoted by the companies that build them as an efficient, sustainable, and scalable solution to "last-mile" delivery. Yet these robots are far more contested than their cute appearance may suggest. As they move through neighbourhoods, they raise unresolved questions about data privacy, liability when things go wrong, and about a patchwork of regulation that is often absent, inconsistent, or struggling to keep up. In sharing pavements with pedestrians, wheelchair users, children, and cyclists, delivery robots also quietly reshape who gets to use public space, and how.

In this talk, Anna Dobrosovestnova draws on her ethnographic research following delivery robots in the wild to explore these tensions from the ground up. She traces her own trajectory as a researcher - from an early fascination with why people stop to help robots that get stuck or stranded, to a growing interest in the politics of public-area mobile robots rollouts and the ways communities push back against, resist, and refuse these technologies in their streets.

Anna is a post-doctoral researcher at Human Computer Interaction group (TU Wien). She is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of human-robot interaction and Science and Technology Studies (STS), focusing on how everyday encounters with robots suggest larger questions about technology, cities, and public life.

Link to Annas Bio