Your Next Delivery Guy Might Be Metallic: How Cities Can Make Room for Delivery Robots
November 5, 2026
Who has right of way at a pedestrian crossing: a parent with a pram, or a robot carrying someone’s lunch? Across much of Europe, the honest answer is that nobody has decided yet.
Delivery robots are already rolling along pavements in London, Helsinki and Tallinn, and the continent’s biggest food delivery platforms are bringing them to more cities every month. Yet even in the UK, where they now operate in a growing list of towns, the law still has no definition of what they actually are. Are they pedestrians? Vehicles? Or something Europe’s traffic rules were simply never written for?
As robots move from university campuses into city centres, European cities face a question they cannot postpone for long: how do you make room for a new kind of traveller on a pavement that was never designed for one?
What Exactly Is a Delivery Robot?
Picture a cooler box on six wheels, about the size of a small suitcase. You order food or groceries in an app, a shop or restaurant places the order inside, and the robot drives it to your door. When it arrives, you unlock the lid with your phone and take your order out.
Image Credit: Coco Robotics
These robots travel on pavements at walking pace and cross roads at pedestrian crossings, just as people do. They find their way using cameras and sensors, and they run on batteries, so they produce no exhaust fumes. Coco Robotics, one of the key operators in the US and Europe, describes its robots in exactly these terms. Most of the time a robot drives itself, but a person watches over it remotely and can take control if it gets stuck or meets something unusual.
That makes delivery robots hard to categorise. They share the pavement with pedestrians, cross the road like pedestrians, but are run by companies rather than people. They do not fit neatly into traffic rules written for walkers, cyclists or drivers.
From University Campuses to City Streets
No longer an experiment
Delivery robots first became familiar on university campuses, where paths are wide and traffic is light. That stage is now over. Starship Technologies, a company with its headquarters in Estonia, has completed more than 10 million deliveries with around 3,000 robots in eight countries. In Finland, roughly one in five grocery deliveries is now made by a robot. In 2026, Starship pulled more than 1,200 robots off US campuses and sent them to deliver groceries and restaurant meals in cities instead.
Image Credit: Starship Technologies
Big delivery apps are on board
The food delivery apps that many of us use every day are now adding robots to their services. Coco Robotics has been delivering in Helsinki with Wolt, and in October 2026 it began delivering in London with Deliveroo, with plans to expand to more British towns. Coco now works with more than 4,500 restaurants and shops in the US and Europe.
The message is clear: delivery robots are becoming a normal part of how goods move around cities.
The Problem with Pavements
The rules have not caught up
In many places, robots arrived before the rules did. In the UK, the walking charity Living Streets wrote to the government in 2026 warning that robots operate in cities such as Sheffield, Leeds, Cambridge and Bristol without any national rules, and that British law does not even define what a delivery robot is. Other countries have taken different routes. In the US state of Pennsylvania, for example, the law treats delivery robots as pedestrians, with speed limits in areas where people walk.
Image Credit: Pexels.com
Safety for everyone on foot
For many people, the pavement is the only place where they feel safe from traffic. Living Streets points out that this is especially true for blind and partially sighted people, wheelchair users and older pedestrians. A robot blocking a narrow pavement is a minor annoyance for most of us, but a real obstacle for someone with a mobility aid.
There is also a physical risk. Crash tests show that a heavier robot, around 60 kg, travelling at 11 km/h can cause serious injuries, especially to children. Robots that move slowly and stay on clear routes are much safer, but someone still needs to decide where robots may go and how fast.
Will people accept them?
Not everyone is comfortable sharing the street with a machine. A 2025 survey of 1,344 people in the US, Europe and Asia found that whether people accept delivery robots depends mainly on how easy they are to use, how risky they seem and how much a delivery costs, and that attitudes differ from region to region. The researchers concluded that robots need to fit naturally into each city, rather than one solution being copied everywhere.
What Robots Could Change for Cities
Fewer vans and scooters
The final stretch of any delivery, from the shop to your door, is the most expensive part of the journey and one of the biggest contributors to traffic on city streets. Today it is mostly covered by couriers on bikes and scooters or in cars, often for orders just a few streets away. Every delivery a robot makes is one that does not need a car, van or scooter. Robots produce no exhaust fumes, do not block the street while a courier runs inside, and do not add to traffic jams outside restaurants at dinner time. For cities trying to cut traffic and pollution in their centres, that can make a real difference.
Image Credit: Pexels.com
Cheaper deliveries, more robots
For delivery companies, the numbers are attractive. Starship says its robots deliver groceries for around €3 less per order than a human courier. Cheaper deliveries usually mean more deliveries, and that is exactly why cities need to plan ahead. A few robots on the street are a curiosity. Hundreds of robots in one neighbourhood are a traffic question.
The Missing Information
One problem gets surprisingly little attention: information. Robots constantly record what is happening around them, yet that information rarely reaches the cities whose pavements they use. A 2026 review of robot delivery trials in the US found that, apart from one trial in Hoboken set up specifically to study accessibility, the trials generally did not keep or share pavement data with the city.
This leaves cities in the dark. Without their own information, they cannot answer simple questions. How many robots use a particular street? Do they slow people down at busy crossings? Are some pavements becoming too crowded? Cities already rely on traffic data to manage roads. Pavements will need the same.
A Baltic Perspective
The Baltic region has a special link to this technology. Starship was founded in Estonia and still has its headquarters there, and robot deliveries are already part of everyday life in Estonia and Finland. Lithuania has taken a different route: since 2023, the Estonian company Clevon and the ordering platform LastMile have been delivering supermarket orders in Vilnius with small driverless vehicles that travel on the road rather than the pavement. In Latvia, there is no commercial robot delivery service yet.
Image Credit: Pexels.com
That gives Latvian cities a rare advantage. With examples on both sides of the border, they can learn from two different models – robots on pavements and robots on roads – and prepare before robots arrive, rather than react afterwards. Latvia has already started to set clearer rules for shared pavements. Changes to the Road Traffic Law that apply from 2026 introduce stricter requirements for e-scooters and similar vehicles, with a strong focus on protecting pedestrians. Delivery robots are the natural next step in that conversation.
What Cities Need to Decide
Cities that want robots to work well for everyone will need to settle a few basic questions:
– What a robot is: a clear legal definition, including who is responsible if something goes wrong.
– Where robots may go: which streets and pavements are suitable, based on their width, how busy they are and the needs of people with disabilities.
– How robots should behave: speed limits where people walk and clear rules for crossings.
– What information operators must share: relevant data about where and how robots operate.
– How the city checks the impact: its own independent measurements, rather than relying only on figures from the operators.
How Fits Traffic Can Help
Before a city can make room for a new kind of traveler, it needs to understand the streets that travelers will use. Fits Traffic helps public authorities do exactly that.
Seeing how streets are used today
Fits Traffic uses cameras and artificial intelligence to count and recognise different types of traffic, monitor busy crossroads and carry out traffic studies. With this information, cities can see how busy their key streets and crossings are before robots arrive, and spot the places where pavements are already under pressure.
Checking what changes over time
Once robots are on the streets, regular monitoring helps cities see whether busy crossings and junctions are affected. Having their own independent data means authorities can adjust the rules or the areas where robots operate based on facts, rather than relying only on the operators’ figures.
Support robots with data
As autonomous delivery robots are introduced onto public streets, cities can play a critical role by providing the data needed for safe and efficient operations. The FitsTraffic platform enables the integration of traffic signal plans, vehicle and pedestrian traffic volumes, roadworks, congestion information, and traffic incident and violation data into a single operational view.
This real-time situational awareness helps robot operators optimize routes, improve safety, and minimize service disruptions. Access to accurate mobility data is essential for ensuring reliable robot operations and avoiding the types of navigation and operational issues that have recently been observed on the streets of Tallinn, Estonia.
Conclusion
The question is no longer whether delivery robots will arrive, but when and how. They already make one in five grocery deliveries in Finland, are spreading across the UK and are moving from university campuses into city centers. They promise fewer vans, cleaner air and cheaper deliveries, but they also arrive in the one part of the street that belongs to people on foot.
The cities that benefit most will be those that plan ahead: setting clear rules, choosing the right streets and making decisions based on reliable information. For Baltic cities, where most pavements have not yet seen a delivery robot, there is still time to get it right from the start.
References
– Coco Robotics. (2026). Coco Robotics and Deliveroo announce exclusive partnership to scale robot deliveries across the UK. https://www.cocodelivery.com/blog/coco-robotics-deliveroo-uk-partnership
– Business Wire. (2025). DoorDash and Coco expand global partnership with U.S. sidewalk robot delivery launch. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250410517445/en/DoorDash-and-Coco-Expand-Global-Partnership-with-U.S.-Sidewalk-Robot-Delivery-Launch
– DC Velocity. (2026). Starship steers its delivery robots off college campuses and toward grocery sector. https://www.dcvelocity.com/transportation/trucking/last-mile/starship-steers-its-delivery-robots-off-college-campuses-and-toward-grocery-sector
– Fits Traffic. (n.d.). Transport computer vision solutions. https://fitstraffic.com/en/
– Journal of Urban Mobility. (2025). Autonomous delivery robots: differences in consumers’ acceptance in the USA, Europe, and Asia. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667091725000123
– Law, Innovation and Technology. (2024). Autonomous delivery robots: a legal framework for infliction of game-theoretic small penalties on pedestrians. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17579961.2024.2392940
– Macgregor, G., & Young, M. (2025). Cities need to get ahead of autonomous delivery robots. Policy Options. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/01/sidewalk-robot-delivery-safety/
– Ministry of Transport of Latvia. (2026). Izmaiņas Ceļu satiksmes likumā – kas jāņem vērā 2026. gadā. https://www.sam.gov.lv/lv/galerija/izmainas-celu-satiksmes-likuma-kas-janem-vera-2026gada
– New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center. (2026). Autonomous delivery robots in Jersey City: what they mean for sidewalk accessibility. https://njbikeped.org/autonomous-delivery-robots-in-jersey-city/
– Starship Technologies. (2026). About Starship. https://www.starship.xyz/about/
– TransportXtra. (2026). Delivery robots put the safety of pedestrians at risk. https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/transit/news/81352/delivery-robots-put-the-safety-of-pedestrians-at-risk/
– Investinestonia (2024). Estonian Clevon to bring more driverless delivery robots to Lithuania. Estonian Clevon to bring more driverless delivery robots to Lithuania — Invest in Estonia
– ERR (2026). Estonian sidewalk delivery robot incident in Tallinn, Estonia. Passengers injured after collision between bus and delivery robot in Tallinn | News | ERR
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