Make Room for Robots
Summary
As robots become increasingly common in cities, from sidewalk delivery bots and security robots to drones and autonomous vehicles, policymakers face new questions about safety, privacy, accessibility, and the use of shared public spaces. In a new article, “Make Room for Robots,” Lina Moe, Bloustein School PhD Candidate and CUPR Energy Research Fellow, and Bloustein School Professor Clinton J. Andrews argue that cities do not necessarily need to create entirely new “robot laws.” Instead, policymakers can begin with existing regulations and governance tools while identifying areas where emerging technologies create genuine gaps.
Moe and Andrews propose a three-question diagnostic framework: What kinds of spaces are robots occupying? What kinds of interactions are they creating? And what infrastructure do they depend on? The answers can help officials determine whether existing tools, including building codes, traffic laws, accessibility requirements, permitting, privacy protections, product safety rules, and procurement standards, can address a particular technology. The authors note that the regulatory challenges become more complicated when robots move from private environments into public spaces, interact with people who have not consented to those interactions, or become closely connected to critical urban infrastructure.
The framework is illustrated through the December 2025 San Francisco blackout, when nearly 1,600 Waymo robotaxis reportedly stopped during the outage, with stalled vehicles blocking streets and complicating emergency response. The incident demonstrated how problems can emerge not simply from an individual autonomous vehicle, but from an entire interconnected fleet experiencing the same disruption. Moe and Andrews recommend that local governments use procurement and permitting to establish requirements for incident reporting, accessibility, staffing and data practices; develop clear channels for coordinating robot-related incidents; and increase transparency by sharing deployment information and lessons learned. As robots become a more routine part of urban life, the authors argue that this framework can help cities determine which governance tools already exist and where new ones are needed.