Robot Meets Its Natural Predator: One Stationary Woman

A delivery robot in Philadelphia encountered a formidable obstacle earlier this month: Carolyn Marvin, standing still.

Marvin says she has been protesting the machines whenever she sees them by placing herself directly in their path. It is a simple system, requiring no placards, chants or advanced anti-robot equipment. The robot attempts to go forward. Marvin does not.

“I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward,” she said.

The latest confrontation involved an Uber delivery robot and became sufficiently eventful for witnesses to call police and report a disturbance. What the robot made of the dispute is not known, though its practical position appears to have been that it wished to continue along its route and there was a woman where the route ought to be.

Police officers arrived and ordered Marvin to move out of the robot’s path. According to police, she ignored those commands. She was then arrested for disorderly conduct, bringing the stand-off to an end through the traditional method of removing the person whom the machine could not get around.

Marvin described her actions as a protest and maintained that blocking the robot was an exercise of free speech. Police treated the matter less as political expression and more as somebody refusing repeated instructions to stop obstructing a delivery device.

The episode leaves Philadelphia with an unusually literal debate over technological progress. On one side was an automated Uber machine designed to carry a delivery through city streets. On the other was a woman whose chosen form of opposition was simply to occupy the small piece of pavement it needed next.

There was no suggestion that Marvin damaged the robot or used force against it. The allegation is that she blocked its path and then declined to move when officers told her to do so. Her arrest followed from that refusal, police said.

No further details were given about the outcome of the disorderly conduct case, what the robot had been carrying, whether its delivery was completed or whether Marvin intends to continue her protests. For now, the machines have learned that their rise can be delayed by one stationary Philadelphian, although police may eventually arrive to restart it.