Are 20mph autonomous delivery robots coming to a bike lane lane near you?
American food delivery company DoorDash has this week unveiled Dot, its “autonomous delivery robot” able “to seamlessly navigate bike lanes, roads, and sidewalks, and that is purpose-built for local commerce”. It’s apparently got a top speed of 20mph, is roughly the size and shape of a large lawn mower, has two large torches for ‘eyes’, and can both make sounds to alert fellow lane users and display information on a graphic display. It has eight cameras and seven sensors but cannot be remotely operated by humans.
For now, Dot will be trialled in various cities in Arizona, starting in Phoenix, before eventually rolling out across the US as part of what DoorDash calls a “Multi-Modal Autonomous Delivery Platform”, an AI-powered system coordinating customer deliveries using drones as well as humans and machines.
Despite being a tenth of the size of a car, Dot has a top-speed of 20mph, posing safety concerns if its autonomous driving system is unable to detect or differentiate pavements from bike lanes, or bike lanes from roads, or users of said routes. DoorDash executive Ashu Rege told TechCrunch that “Dot is trained to be deferential to bicyclists and pedestrians, while being large enough to be visible to drivers”. That might not be enough to avoid the fate of other autonomous delivery machines in recent months.
What it looks like when a driver hits a Coco
— Steven (@stevevance.net) 31 August 2025 at 04:25
DoorDash developed Dot in-house and doesn’t currently operate in the UK so whilst we’re unlikely to be seeing Dot on the streets anytime soon, don’t be surpirsed if this is a harbinger of what’s to come.
Stanley Tang, Co-Founder and Head of DoorDash Labs claims “the breakthrough” was making it “autonomous, reliable and efficient to serve the needs of local businesses and consumers”.
Over the past few years, DoorDash Labs has been building one of the most sophisticated autonomy stacks designed for the real-world challenges of local delivery.
Today, we’re introducing Dot, the first commercial autonomous delivery robot to travel on bike lanes, roads, and… pic.twitter.com/P2JS8moA17
— Stanley Tang (@stanleytang) September 30, 2025
He said: “Dot is purpose-built for the millions of deliveries we facilitate every day. It is small enough to navigate doorways and driveways, fast enough to maintain food quality, and smart enough to optimise the best routes for delivery. Every design decision, from its compact size to its speed to the sensor suite, came from analysing billions of deliveries on our global platform and understanding what actually moves the needle for merchants and consumers.”
Already, the internet is opinionated on the matter. On social media, opinion was divided. While we’d be most concerned with the road safety aspect of the development, there have also been plenty of other aspects and implications debated too.
“Making mass unemployment cute. See through the BS” wrote one Instagram user.
“Another day, another pointless innovation nobody wants which also screws over our fellow humans by taking their jobs,” said another on Bluesky.
Gary Wanderer wrote on the same platform: “That would be an illegal use of bike lanes which prohibit motorised vehicles.”
X (formerly Twitter) was, unsurprisingly given the ownership and algorithm-tweaking of Elon Musk, more laid-back by the development of another AI automation. “This is super cool, the best of the delivery robots I’ve seen,” Sheel Mohnot wrote.
“If we were re-working cities for our new future I wonder what they’d look like. Perhaps another set of bike-sized lanes for robot deliveries with Amazon, DoorDash etc.”
However, these autonomous devices might be vulnerable to legal challenge.
“Here is a very good example of where a straight-up ban on state and local AI regulation might bite us,” Dean Ball from the Foundation for American Innovation think tank wrote.
“This thing is basically illegal by default in most cities. So we will need cities and/or states to write new laws and rules about an autonomous/AI system if we want adoption.”
This led a user known by the moniker ‘They call me Bruce’ to remark: “Look I’m pro AI but honestly I’d rather not share the bike lane with an autonomous burrito delivery vehicle because someone can’t be bothered to get off their fat ass and get their own food.”
27 thoughts on “US delivery company DoorDash wants autonomous robots with 20mph top speed to use bike lanes”
Do the US actually have
Do the US actually have usable cycling infrastructure?
I would happily consent to this using cycle lanes in the UK. After all they are known as the murder strip for good reason. It wouldn’t get down a pavement though , a pram can’t get down one near me , so this thing would have no chance, besides it’d probably get mugged.
A lot of parts of the us don
A lot of parts of the US don’t even have pavements.
Actually in the major cities
Actually in the major cities the cycle lanes are pretty good. Their wide roads have allowed the construction of decent width segregated lanes. Where they’re not segregated, signs remind drivers to share the road, there are markings on the tarmac, and the drivers are relatively well behaved as I reckon they’re nervous of being sued. Doesn’t stop the usual odd idiot as per everywhere but it’s generally quite good.
The traffic lights every block do get pretty frustrating though.
Joux Plane wrote:
Which cities? I’m not current on the US but the last I heard the majority of cities it was “none”, a few were “painted bike gutters with sharrows” and then there were NY, Portland, San Francisco – and those are still a very mixed bag, with eg police in New York happy to proactively defend dodgy drivers when they kill cyclists or even pedestrians…
Have just had look about again – will apparently need to see what they’re up to in Minnesota too…
Ah – that is familiar to those in the UK, alas! Paint, signs and exhortations to “share the road”. The highways equivalent of “thoughts and prayers” said with a knowing wink!
Well it must have come on leaps and bounds … “quite good” would astonish me, but again it’s been many years since I visited, though I do sometimes see it on the ‘net.
The traffic light situation reflects a particular strand of highways engineering, which countries usually find ways to move beyond once they look at more efficient road networks. Some explanation here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G24x26s3Hjg&t=274
I had another look – this
I had another look – this chap has an interesting (if extremely brief) video summary (including Canada).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1bb3tkNWGcw&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD
More than I was expecting (especially Minneapolis) – but eg. the idea of “centre lane bike paths” being used (and in some of the better places) shows that there is a long way to go in terms of safety and convenience. (TBF didn’t Manchester have one proposed? It would be a bad idea here also…)
Nothing new – if there’s a
Nothing new – if there’s a “free” space someone will try to make use of it in the pursuit of money.
(See food delivery companies etc. And indeed businesses since forever expanding into the public space in front of their shop, storing stuff and vehicles on footways and cycle paths…)
Personally I think we need more independent human-powered mobility rather than space for drones. But we know that many humans have a very limited enthusiasm for that…
Weren’t there some smaller ones being trialled in the UK?
Is this the “wheeling” that ex-Sustrans are for?
OTOH perhaps that will have
OTOH perhaps that will have (a few of) the tech-bros incentivised to stop bigger vehicles running into mobility infra users?
OTOOH the tech-bros will
OTOOH the tech-bros will argue the robots have to be bigger, to avoid the problem of other bigger vehicles running into them, and devil take the mobility infa users.
I feel intrinsically against
I feel intrinsically against this. But if food-delivery bots gained traction then all the bike lanes that are not being built for cyclists would probably magically appear for delivery bots.
Plus, 20 mph tow-bots.They
Plus, 20 mph tow-bots.They even have a grab handle.
20mph? How soon before it’s
20mph? How soon before it’s increased on the argument that the robots are infallible so 20mph is an unjustifiable arbitrary restriction on profit?
Um 20mph is the standard e
Um 20mph is the standard e-bike limit in the US.
Maybe can the paranoia?
OK, we allow them in the
OK, we allow them in the cycle lanes on the proviso that these 20mph bots have a cyclist friendly handle on top that we can grab hold of for a free tow. Deal?
Sticky bot!
Sticky bot!
Rendel Harris wrote:
Only if it’s carrying sticky bottles!
surely that would just become
surely that would just become a game of people jumping in front of them and testing their collison avoidance, or lack of – great content either way
And possibly a claim
And possibly a claim
How rigorous has the testing
How rigorous has the testing on these robots been? Is the deference to cyclists and pedestrians 100%?
A more likely scenario:
1)” Testing is encouraging. Let’s roll these out. There’s a lot of money to be made.”
2)”What 5 cyclist deaths and 4 seriously injured pedestrians in Seattle in 4 months? Impossible! These robots are rigourously tested!”
3) “More deaths? Ok there may be a few teething problems. We’ll look into it. But the robots need to keep working. They are worth $xxxxxx to the economy and we’ve invested $xxxxxx. We need to adjust the max speed to 30mph, so we can make more money to pay for any possible lawsuits.”
4) “Yes there are some detection issues. Cyclists with white shoes and pedestrians wearing pantyhose are invisible to the robots.”
5) “We need to ban cyclists and pedestrians before more lives are lost.”
Wonder if they’re susceptible
Wonder if they’re susceptible to coning or the like?
https://hackaday.com/2023/09/15/coning-cars-for-fun-and-non-profit/
“Monkey-wrench gang” or luddites?
Probably all the folks walking, horsing, driving their animals or otherwise conducting their business in the roads (over 100 years ago) laughed at the few odd cars they saw about. What funny contraptions! Fortunately harmless, they thought…
I trust that the ‘humans’
I trust that the ‘humans’ will fight back against Skynet in the usual way, by hacking into them and forcing them into banzai charges against GrossPanzers driven by the LardArses who should be carrying these trivial bags around themselves- pause for ‘but what about the disabled/ blind’? etc. etc.
How much do they pay for
How much do they pay for using the public infrastructure for private profit? Or why not ask the rail companies if they can put robo-wagons on the rail network for free? Thought not.
But but business rates!
But but business rates!
Presumably it’s the same as how private companies get free benefit * from using the public road.
I guess I begrudge such use more since mobility infra is a (deliberately) scarce resource. One which we need to be *as attractive as possible* to persuade some people to drive fewer trips. And the public utility of their business seems on the same order as paying people to drive liveried vehicles around.
* Yes, they pay “road tax” on the vehicles, which doesn’t cover all the externalities of motoring for them any more than it does for their employees who drive to work.
Roads are paid for from
Roads are paid for from general taxation. You can’t moan about that from a funding perspective and yet on the same hand use it as a defence from entitled drivers.
Secret_squirrel wrote:
I’ll do worse: hospitals and medical care costs are also paid for from general taxation – and i reserve the right to moan about motorised road users helping fill them (and reducing active travel, another negative health effect)!
You aren’t saying that since motoring taxes are not directly connected to road funding that perhaps motorists shouldn’t pay any?
I guess it’s a balance – it was decided way back that there shouldn’t be a direct link (so no “road tax”). In part so drivers wouldn’t “own the roads” (IIRC).
But of course the government also wanted *some* money for the much greater costs that providing for automotive use brought. So we have a “pollution tax”. True, somewhat scaled by vehicle weight although not in a way that recognises the much greater damage due to heavier vehicles. And now suddenly applying to electric vehicles – which to be fair are still emitting, but elsewhere…
Perhaps my complaint about the business use would be less if the tax more closely aligned with eg. road damage?
Weird take. How much do
Weird take. How much do private haulage companies pay?
Just enough to cover what they legally have to pay for their vehicles. Just like Door Dash would if this even came to the UK.
I don’t trust myself, let
I don’t trust myself, let alone anyone else, not to throw a bag over the sensors to stop one, then open it up for a game of “Takeaway Surprise”!
they have been using delivery
they have been using delivery robots in Milton Keynes in the UK for years, although the new town road infrastucture there is probably more suitable than most places. Are these ones genuine AI controlled, or really controlled remotely by someone being paid peanuts in South America or the Phillipines like many “automated” things in the US?