It seems that Uber Eats really goes out of its way to deliver their customers’ meal. In an unusual situation, a company robot invaded a crime scene, those with yellow ribbons around them, in Los Angeles (USA). The whole situation was recorded by a Twitter user, who released it on the same day. The vehicle is autonomous, but the error was human.
After a suspected shooting at a school called Hollywood High School, police arrived at the scene and closed off access to the area. Several vehicles and professionals were on the block, which was surrounded by a yellow tape to prevent the presence of onlookers.
However, authorities did not expect the Uber Eats robot. With the intention of delivering a meal, the small vehicle stopped in front of the crime scene. Then it appears that he tried to recalculate the route, but ended up moving forward and breaching the perimeter defined by the officers. At the very least, the customer must have received their meal while still hot.
All of this was recorded by William Gude, a Twitter user, who has an account focused on documenting police activity in the area.
The little robot uses a GPS route to deliver the food on time. Therefore, it is understandable that he considered this path as the best option for his destination.
Still, this situation was not supposed to have occurred. Serve Robotics, a subsidiary of Uber, explains to the Gizmodo that their robots can operate autonomously “under most circumstances”, but they are supervised by humans to ensure they function safely.
That is, this incident was caused by human error. A spokesperson for Serve Robotics says the following:
“Standard operating procedure is to change the route and not cross barrier tapes; however, in this case, the robot supervisor thought they were authorizing passage. We are taking steps to ensure that our operating procedures are followed in the future.”
Uber Eats no longer operates in Brazil
Most likely we will not see an Uber Eats robot operating on the streets of our country, as the company ended its food delivery operations in Brazil in March 2022.
The main reason found is that the company was unable to face the success of iFood. The company sent a statement to the General Superintendence (SG) of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) in which it states that the decision is a consequence of the competitor’s “monopoly”.
However, it is worth remembering that Uber still makes deliveries to the market and pharmacies through Cornershop. What was closed is the delivery of meals from restaurants, same work by Rappi and, of course, iFood.
https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2022/09/15/robo-do-uber-eats-dedicado-a-levar-comida-ao-cliente-invade-cena-de-crime/