This retired professor was arrested for blocking a delivery robot. She says she’ll do it again

October 14 wasn’t the first time Carolyn Marvin put herself in front of an autonomous delivery robot. It had become, since the wheeled little food vessels were unleashed upon certain parts of Philadelphia, a habit for the 78-year-old: standing in front of one of the robots when she encountered it rolling on the sidewalk, delaying it for a few minutes from delivering its precious lunchtime cargo.

But it was the first time that Marvin, a retired University of Pennsylvania communications professor, was arrested for doing it — in a case that she says raises profound questions about public space and the legal protections extended to robots in our increasingly tech-dominated world.

“I was under the impression that I had more rights than the robot did,” Marvin said, laughing.

Uber Eats launched its self-driving robot delivery fleet in Philly in March, making it the fourth city where meals can be delivered via robot. Not everyone welcomed the heart-eyed little machines: In Philadelphia and elsewhere, videos show people sitting on, vandalizing or kicking the robots.

Marvin says the impact of her one-woman protest is limited. “I have a life, so I don’t have tons of time to stand in front of robots,” she said. If she comes across a robot, and it’s “convenient and possible” for her, she might spend 10 or 15 minutes blocking it, moving as it does, to delay it on its journey.

The only harm that comes from her hobby is that an office worker’s lunchtime bowl “might be delayed for about 15 minutes at the most,” she said.

She views her actions as a symbolic protest against the problems posed by delivery robots: the displacement of low-income delivery workers; the physical hazard the robots pose on the sidewalk; and the privacy concerns posed by the robots’ embedded cameras.

“I also think that I have a First Amendment right to protest the abuses of corporations in public space, in the same public space that the robots are occupying,” she said. In the past, she had protested in favor of civil rights, abortion rights, Black Lives Matters, and for ending the Gulf and Vietnam wars. She views her robot mission as an extension of the same impulse: “It’s what we need to do to make sure the government hears the will of the people.”

Stopping in front of the robots, Marvin said, led to productive conversations with other passersby who asked what she was doing. Most were supportive, or curious. She never considered that she might be arrested, since, as she said, “I wasn’t impeding any persons. I was impeding a machine.”

That’s until the 14th. On the way home from getting her flu shot, Marvin, a jar of enchilada sauce in one hand and chicken biryani takeout in the other, encountered one of the robots and stopped in front of it, per usual. It was in a busy part of the city, and a larger-than-normal crowd began to gather around her. Some were supportive; some were critical. She suspects, she said, that a member of the crowd eventually called the police, who handcuffed her and put her in the back of a squad car, giving her a citation for disorderly conduct.

Marvin said one of her friends put it thusly: “Well, you got a disorderly conduct charge for impeding capitalism.”

Philadelphia police said that they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a delivery robot.” When they arrived, “officers encountered a female who was refusing to allow a delivery robot to pass,” they wrote in an email. “Police issued multiple commands directing the female to move; however, she refused to comply.”

In the aftermath of her arrest, Marvin has found out more about the legal infrastructure that protects robots. In 2020, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that classifies autonomous delivery robots — what the law calls “personal delivery devices” — as pedestrians, not vehicles. Democrats, along with labor unions and accessibility advocates, largely opposed the law on the basis that legalizing delivery robots could kill jobs and endanger children and pedestrians; Republicans touted it as an exciting technological advancement.

The law means that a vehicle must yield to a delivery robot on crosswalks, just as it would to a person, said John Mattiacci, a Philadelphia personal injury attorney. Still, in theory humans are at the top of the hierarchy: “Personal delivery devices must yield to other pedestrians and pedalcyclists in a pedestrian area,” he said. Uber Eats didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Marvin sees the proliferation of delivery robots — and the legal protections of them — as another case of machinery and technology infiltrating everyday life. “There’s a way in which we’ve surrendered the streets to cars long ago, and I don’t think we should surrender the sidewalks to machines,” she said.

“Machines in general encroach on our lives,” she went on. “Public space is the most visible place where they’re encroaching on our lives, but they’re going right up the ladder, and lots of people are interested in making that happen.”

Most of the technology people encounter day to day is less tangible: the overwhelming adoption of AI, the mysterious social media algorithms that determine the images and narratives the public consumes. The robots, on the other hand, are a clear and visible symbol of the tech takeover, an easy target for anti-tech rage. Her protest, she said, “makes it visible to people and presents the issue in a way that it might not otherwise be presented.” Asked if she plans to get back to blocking robots post-arrest, Marvin was succinct: “Oh yeah.” But now she’ll keep an eye out for the cops.

10月14日并不是卡罗琳·马文第一次挡在自动送餐机器人前面。自从这些带轮子的小型送餐车在费城某些地区投入使用以来，这已经成了这位78岁老人的习惯：每当她在人行道上遇到机器人时，她都会站在机器人前面，让它耽搁几分钟，以免送来宝贵的午餐。

但这是马文（一位退休的宾夕法尼亚大学传播学教授）第一次因这样做而被捕——她说，此案引发了关于公共空间以及在我们日益科技主导的世界中给予机器人的法律保护的深刻问题。

“我一直以为我的权利比机器人多，”马文笑着说。

Uber Eats于3月在费城推出了自动驾驶机器人送餐车队，使费城成为第四个可以进行机器人送餐的城市。但并非所有人都欢迎这些可爱的小机器：在费城和其他地方，视频显示有人坐上去、破坏或踢打这些机器人。

马文说，她这种一人抗议的影响有限。“我也有自己的生活，所以没那么多时间站在机器人前面，”她说。如果她碰巧遇到一个机器人，而且对她来说“方便可行”，她可能会花10到15分钟挡住它，随着它的移动，拖延它的行程。

她说，她的爱好带来的唯一危害是，上班族的午餐时间“最多可能会延迟 15 分钟左右”。

她将自己的行为视为对送货机器人带来的问题的象征性抗议：低收入送货员的失业；机器人对人行道造成的安全隐患；以及机器人内置摄像头带来的隐私问题。

“我认为，根据美国宪法第一修正案，我有权利在公共空间，也就是机器人占据的这片公共空间，抗议企业的滥用行为，”她说道。过去，她曾参与过支持民权、堕胎权、“黑人的命也是命”运动以及结束海湾战争和越南战争的抗议活动。她将自己的机器人行动视为这种诉求的延伸：“我们必须这样做，才能确保政府听到人民的意愿。”

马文说，她停在机器人前，和其他路人聊了起来，他们问她在干什么。大多数人都很支持她，或者只是好奇。她从没想过自己会被逮捕，因为正如她所说，“我没有妨碍任何人，我只是妨碍了一台机器。”

直到14号那天，情况才有所好转。玛文打完流感疫苗回家，一手拿着一罐墨西哥辣酱，一手拿着外卖的鸡肉饭，像往常一样，她遇到了一个自动售货机，便停了下来。当时正值市中心繁华地段，比平时多的一群人开始围着她。有些人表示支持，有些人则持批评态度。她说，她怀疑是人群中有人最终报了警，警察给她戴上手铐，把她塞进警车后座，并给她开了一张扰乱治安的罚单。

马文说，她的一位朋友是这样形容的：“嗯，你因为阻碍资本主义而被控扰乱治安。”

费城警方表示，他们接到一起“涉及送货机器人的恶意破坏”的报案。警方在一封电子邮件中写道，警员到达现场后，“发现一名女子拒绝让送货机器人通过”。“警方多次命令该女子让路，但她拒绝服从。”

在被捕之后，马文对保护机器人的法律体系有了更深入的了解。2020年，宾夕法尼亚州议会通过了一项法律，将自动送货机器人（该法律称之为“个人送货设备”）归类为行人而非车辆。民主党人、工会和无障碍倡导者大多反对这项法律，理由是送货机器人合法化可能会导致失业，并危及儿童和行人的安全；而共和党人则称赞这是一项令人兴奋的技术进步。

费城人身伤害律师约翰·马蒂亚奇表示，法律规定车辆在人行横道上必须像礼让行人一样礼让送餐机器人。不过，理论上人类仍然处于优先地位：“在行人区域，个人送餐设备必须礼让其他行人和骑自行车的人。” Uber Eats 未对此置评。

马文认为，送货机器人的普及及其受到的法律保护，是机械和技术渗透日常生活的又一例证。“我们很久以前就把街道拱手让给了汽车，我不认为我们应该把人行道让给机器，”她说。

她继续说道：“机器总体上正在侵蚀我们的生活。公共空间是它们侵蚀我们生活最明显的地方，但它们正在步步高升，很多人都乐于看到这种情况发生。”

人们日常生活中接触到的大部分技术都比较隐晦：人工智能的广泛应用，以及决定公众所接收图像和信息内容的神秘社交媒体算法。而机器人则截然不同，它们是科技接管的清晰可见的象征，也很容易成为反科技情绪的攻击目标。她说，她的抗议“让人们看到这一点，并以一种原本可能不会被呈现的方式来呈现这个问题”。当被问及被捕后是否计划继续屏蔽机器人时，马文简洁地回答：“当然。”但现在她会更加警惕警察。