Will public-area mobile robots (PMRs) make cities better places for people with disabilities?
Author: Bern Grush
Date: October 19, 2024
In December of 2021, Toronto City Council passed a bylaw to ban the use of public-area mobile robots (PMRs) from Toronto’s walkways and bikeways, until such time as the Province of Ontario would provide a degree of guidance by way of a formal pilot scheme. The principal trigger for the ban was a request from the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee asking for restrictions related to safety concerns. One of the stated concerns claimed that such devices might run into or trip blind persons. [1]
Given the complaint being addressed, the dearth of reliable, independent knowledge, and hands-on experience on the part of City transportation, public works, infrastructure, and traffic professionals regarding these devices City Council made an understandable decision in 2021. [2]
As we approach the third anniversary of that decision, let’s revisit the social question of the suitability of robots on our walkways and streets by leading with the question “can PMRs make a city more livable for people with disabilities?” rather than “should we continue to ban these PMRs to guarantee safety for people with disabilities?”
Of course, we want both livability and safety. But it is far more socially generous to seek ways to make people “better off” rather than “not worse off.” In this lies an enormous opportunity for cities that is easily overlooked when we demand restrictions rather than call for improvements. This can be done by setting service quotas and selecting a wider variety of tasks to be performed for disability and senior communities.
Every technology that humans devise has benefits and drawbacks, and the human experience is improved when we nurture and guide its benefits and guard against its drawbacks. We are seldom perfect at this, but we can nearly always choose a better path than a simple ban.
Delivery is not enough
Some PMR delivery operators promote their ability to deliver to people with disabilities. While both laudable and true, this works only for some people since few delivery robots are versatile enough to operate indoors and out while using stairs, elevators, and doors. Because these act as barriers for many in the disabled community and for most PMRs, delivery reach is curtailed.
These barriers are being overcome, but in 2024 commercial delivery PMRs have only a limited repertoire of operational capabilities—smooth and near-level sidewalks, gradual ramps, and shallow curbs. Worse, personal delivery using PMRs currently demands synchrony—the receiver must be at the destination with her smart phone to unlock and extract the cargo.
If cities or facilities asked for what its communities needed rather than simply permitting what’s on offer, a larger variety of more suitable outcomes would become available as innovators respond to cities’ challenges.
Holistic, targeted and structured
Cities can look beyond the current limitations of robotic last-mile food and grocery delivery to review other categories of mobile robot capabilities and consider more holistic PMR thinking. Weigh each category to focus at least some overt attention on the disability community—from universal design when deploying, to minimum requirements for targeted services where deployed. As well, cities can structure the PMR programs chosen around common regulations and cross-application approaches to their introduction, safety, and management relative to the disability community.
In addition to the possibly of licensing one or more PMR delivery fleets, consider a minimum of two other task categories for PMRs. Do this in order to be sure to consider the policies and oversight capabilities your city or facility will need as this technology matures to become routine. Once you consider a small variety of tasks to which to apply robotics, you will begin to develop a more holistic understanding of future policy and management requirements. Consider:
Mobility assistance such as guidance devices, cross-walk assistants, and automated wheelchairs in hospitals or airports. Would a city museum be more welcoming to seniors if it offered automatic wheelchair portering during a visit?
Monitoring systems including mobile security robots, environmental monitoring, and asset inspection. Imagine feeding navigation imagery from a delivery robots into a system inspecting the condition of assets such as traffic signage and sidewalk condition. Better management of sidewalk conditions is of heightened importance to members of the disability community. Knowing what needs attention is the first step to addressing accessibility short falls on urban walkways.
Maintenance robots for floor cleaning, park and lawn mowing, snow and ice removal. Snow and ice removal robotics currently have limited operating domains and need oversight, but being able to make sidewalks safer and therefore more accessible for our senior or disability communities is especially valuable.
Delivery services beyond food, especially including medical applications. Moving medical test devices and samples to and from in-home care allows more surgery patients to recover while being monitored at home which many families and patients prefer. This also addresses the growing demand for hospital beds.
It turns out that there are robotic devices for all of these purposes in various stages of innovation and early commercialization. Demand for such services is the surest motivation for this technology to improve.
When a city or facility wishes to license PMRs whose task and deployment configurations are guided by social rather than commercial goals, it should first determine a set of goals that could be addressed by robotic devices, then determine currently viable solutions for some of them. Such solutions are continuously improving.
While robotic tasks such as mobility assistance, monitoring, maintenance, and delivery each seem very different, there are common regulatory matters regarding PMR behaviours in public spaces. These behaviours are independent of the kind of task that a PMR is designed to perform. This is one of the important reasons for thinking about all PMRs in a holistic and structured manner rather than thinking only about last mile delivery. For PMRs that are enabled to move along our streets and sidewalks, their behaviour at crosswalks is the most critical. This should be regulated and enforced on a common basis across all PMR types.
City-guided approach to creating a diverse and balanced robot fleet
Throughout this learning process, cities will naturally trial and pilot locally, but they should think city-wide choosing ideas that can and should scale once proven successful. Engage with disability advocacy groups, senior organizations, and other stakeholders to set clear, measurable goals for improving accessibility and quality of life.
Knowing that innovation is in early stages for this technology, cities should consider innovation prizes within the desired service categories. Create a diverse selection committee including planners, accessibility experts, and community representatives, and evaluate proposals based on technical merit, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with your city’s goals. The best reward, of course, is a service contract for the winner(s). Cities that do this must be very specific about minimum required outcomes and desired features. Awards should only be granted when those outcomes and features can be demonstrated.
When you have selected a proposal that you will deploy manage integration and coordination with a central coordination system to manage the diverse robot fleet. When fleet sizes scale, you will eventually require ways for multiple fleets to coordinate their movements and tasks within spaces they share with each other and with human pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. This is seldom an issue during trials and pilots, but start thinking and asking about this before complaints come in.
Make sure the members of the communities you intended to help have access to the services you enable. Sometimes that requires service providers to create programming to boost access and acceptance. At other times—especially for sidewalk monitoring and maintenance or autonomous wheelchair access at facilities—it may require an app for residents to access services.
All of this will need continuous evaluation and adaptation which means regular reviews of fleet performance, community impacts, licensing requirements, fleet composition and maintaining open channels for community feedback and suggestions.
Technology will evolve and that demands policy to evolve
Create incentive programs for robot providers to develop innovative solutions for underserved populations or neglected service areas. Consider implementing a fee structure for commercial uses to subsidize services for the disability community. Collaborate with other cities to share best practices. Balance standardization and innovation where possible.
To balance commercial and accessibility interests, could senior and disabled pedestrians be made safer when crossing roadways if PMRs on patrol, delivery, or maintenance runs act as crossing guards during road crossings? Could you require a minimum percentage (say, 20%) of deliveries be to seniors and members of the disability community? Could you include a requirement for at least some deliveries to be made to residents in multi-story buildings requiring solutions to opening doors and using elevators?
Can you improve safety by coordinating monitoring and maintenance by having delivery or security patrol PMRs detect icy conditions, then call for de-icing PMRs to address the issue? No one does that now, but if you asked for it someone could.
Should some or all PMRs be required to surrender anonymized image data for map update or security purposes? Should a PMR be required to call emergency services and stay at the scene of a human injury or altercation, even if the PMR is not involved in the circumstance? These are complex social and privacy questions, but if answered acceptably, there are opportunities for safer communities. This means that in addition to anonymized data collection and strict data retention and use protocols, cities may need to aggregate data reporting and be subject to audits by independent third parties.
Scenario for a mid-sized city
It would be daunting for one PMR to handle even a fraction of all these ideas, but it is possible for a city-guided program to select a balanced number of these benefits and to license a small number of PMR providers in a way that, taken together, the entire multi-agent fleet would provide a desirable balance for a city.
Here is an example scenario as a compressed summary of this approach:
Assess: Identify a need for better mobility assistance for seniors, improved delivery services in food deserts, and more efficient sidewalk maintenance.
Select: Issue a challenge (contest or RFP) for three targeted categories: (1) autonomous wheelchairs for your hospital, government buildings and museum, (2) smart delivery robots with accessibility features suitable to a large number of your senior and disabled residents, and (3) sidewalk safety such as monitoring and salting. Some of these solutions can mixed and matched on one PMR design (such as delivery and monitoring), and you will only select the ones that satisfy your criteria.
Implement: Start with a 6–12-month pilot in select neighborhoods, gradually expanding city-wide over the next couple years.
Adjust and adapt: Once comfortable, start adding new tasks, especially by extending the capability of existing fleets, such as adding environmental sensors to one or more of the existing fleets. Of course, as you gain experience you may add more providers and types of PMRs.
Continuous Improvement: Seek regular community feedback to be incorporated into updates in PMR behaviors and services.
This approach allows the city to gradually curate a diverse fleet of robots that comprehensively addresses community needs while remaining flexible to incorporate new solutions as needed.
NEXT STEPS
We invite you to download the Executive Guide to PMRs and join URF as a member. Preparation is the key to capturing the benefits for all stakeholders and members of your community. We are in the early stages of developing a 'regulatory' guide/roadmap (see image below). Member support will be essential to the creation of this publication.
Comments