The robot revolution is meeting resistance, especially in the US, where attitudes about artificial intelligence have soured dramatically.
Rhetoric from tech leaders, coupled with a steady stream of troubling economic news, is pushing public sentiment toward a fever pitch. There’s a rash of human-on-robot crime from coast to coast.
The majority of the incidents involve small sidewalk delivery robots, which are inherently more vulnerable due to their size. Some also involve self-driving cars that are engineered to stop when a human is too close, even if it traps passengers inside while under attack.
Resistance is expected during technology rollouts. Early deployments of delivery robots and autonomous systems have always attracted curiosity, interference, and occasional vandalism as people test the boundaries of something novel. But the current wave of incidents is unfolding in a very different context. They’re fueled by economic anxiety and growing mistrust of the institutions deploying the systems.
In Philadelphia, reports of mischief came almost immediately after Uber Eats deployed Avride’s sidewalk delivery robots in March 2026. Footage of several incidents has surfaced, where people can be seen kicking, sitting on, vandalizing, and attempting to destroy the robots.
The city of Philly has a reputation for being unfriendly toward robots.
Back in 2014, a social experiment called hitchBOT explored whether robots could trust humans. Canadian researchers designed the solar-powered robot that had poodle noodles for arms, wore Wellington boots, and displayed a smiley face on its LED screen. Tracked by GPS, the robot relied on the good will of strangers as it ventured safely across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands.
It only lasted two weeks in the US. On its way from Boston to San Francisco, hitchBOT met its demise in Philadelphia, where it was vandalized and damaged beyond repair.
Anger toward physical automation is also brewing on the West Coast. In recent viral footage, a man goes off on a mobile bot in Los Angeles asking for help crossing the street.
“Sit here all night,” he told the robot. “Tell whoever’s food that is to come press the button for you. It’s not my problem.”
The robot was developed by the Redwood City-based company Serve Robotics. The publicly traded firm reports more than 2,000 deployments, mostly throughout LA, Atlanta, Dallas-Forth Worth, Miami, and Chicago. In the Windy City, residents are petitioning officials to pause after at least two of them smashed glass crashing into bus shelters.
There’s no indication that anyone has been charged with property destruction in connection with the recent wave of robot-related incidents. Companies deploying them tend to treat vandalism as a maintenance issue rather than escalating to law enforcement. They say pushback is expected when they enter new communities.
If analysts’ projections pan out, autonomous robots in public spaces is something that most communities will have to become accustomed to. They predict that global shipments of mobile robots will reach nearly 3 million units by 2030. While that figure includes industrial and warehouse systems, a significant share will be visible in public-facing roles. Sidewalk delivery bots are among the fastest-growing segments, expanding at a rate exceeding 30 percent each year as companies push to reduce last-mile delivery costs.