ABSTRACT
Robots in different forms are increasingly being used in the streets, sidewalks, skies and public realm of cities. Urban robots have the potential to transform urban life, for good and for bad in areas such as mobility, policing and surveillance, logistics and assisted living. This chapter examines the challenges for governments and citizens in managing the rollout of urban robotics. In particular, the chapter highlights the difference between first-wave regulatory concerns over disruption and public safety, and less visible second-wave issues of social control linked to the physical capacities of robots and wider systems of AI-enabled data processing. It is argued that governments will need to work hard to ensure that there is an appropriate consideration of potential second-wave impacts when opening-up public space for robots in the first wave. This is an urgent challenge because second-wave concerns will be more difficult to address when robots are embedded in the basic functioning of cities. Central to the chapter is the need to foreground and connect the material and immaterial politics of urban robotic restructuring.
