The robot navigated the crowded sidewalks of Jersey City with ease, cruising between pedestrians, over jagged curb cuts and around trash cans until it suddenly ran into a conundrum: an S.U.V. stopped in the middle of the crosswalk.
Pedestrians casually sidestepped the obstruction. But the robot was trained to yield to anything in its path, so it froze, seemingly contemplating what to do.
After the S.U.V. moved, the robot resumed its journey, rolling a few more blocks until it met Ken Reyes outside his apartment. Mr. Reyes tapped an app on his phone to unlock the robot’s hatch. He was pleased that his lunch — a chicken cutlet sandwich from an Italian restaurant — had arrived hot and with what he considered a discount.
“They don’t charge a tip when it’s the robot,” he said.
Roughly the size of a large picnic cooler on wheels, delivery robots have become ubiquitous in Jersey City since their arrival last year. Owned by two tech competitors, Coco Robotics and Avride, that have partnered with apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats, the Jersey City fleet is part of a national effort to disrupt food delivery. Neither tech company would say exactly how many robots have been deployed, but Avride did confirm that the fleet was the largest it had deployed in a city.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/nyre ... =url-share