The small food-delivery robots rolling along downtown San Jose sidewalks now have a rulebook. On Tuesday, the San José City Council approved regulations for what the city calls personal delivery devices, voting 9-2, according to Spartan Media Group, the student news outlet at San José State University. Councilmembers Domingo Candelas of District 8 and Peter Ortiz of District 5 cast the two no votes.
What the rules require
Two companies, Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics, already run delivery robots in the city, and DoorDash plans to bring in its own device, called Dot. Under the new framework, every robot must obey traffic laws, and operators need a one-year permit costing $200 per device. Robots are limited to 5 mph on pedestrian pathways. The city keeps the power to cap how many robots operate and where they can go, and it can remove any robot that sits inactive for more than 30 minutes.
DoorDash's Dot gets its own, tighter set of conditions. The roughly five-foot-tall robot is built to travel in bike lanes and can reach 20 mph, about twice the top speed of the smaller Coco and Serve units, according to the city's presentation. It will run under a one-year pilot permit at $250 per device. It must slow to 5 mph at protected intersections, match the pace of the slowest cyclist around it, and flash emergency lights if it stops working. San José Spotlight reported earlier that city transportation staff would only extend the pilot if it proves successful.
Supporters and skeptics
A Serve Robotics policy executive told the council the company has made hundreds of deliveries in San Jose since July for 34 local businesses, most of them small, independent restaurants. One District 3 resident argued the rules don't go far enough. He said a heavy robot moving at 20 mph seemed risky for pedestrians, pets and wildlife, and that a 30-minute grace period for a stalled robot was too long.
Mayor Matt Mahan framed the vote as an effort to get ahead of new technology while weighing its downsides. A senior deputy city attorney told councilmembers that the operators' contracts include indemnification language, meaning the companies, not the city, would be on the hook for damage their robots cause.
Why it matters
Delivery robots first appeared on San Jose sidewalks in April. Until now the city had no formal permit system for them. The new rules give San Jose a way to grow or shrink the program as it learns how the machines share space with people on foot and on bikes, and the DoorDash trial will be an early test of whether larger, faster robots can work in the city's bike lanes.