Chicago's delivery robots face a make-or-break year

Catch up quick: The City Council passed the Personal Delivery Device (PDD) pilot program in 2022 as part of a city program for emerging businesses.

• Coco launched in Chicago in December 2024, followed by Serve Robotics on Sept. 30, 2025.
• Coco robots are the pink boxes on wheels and Serve's more anthropomorphic robots have names and painted eyes.
• Serve is operational in 15 wards, stretching from Austin to Edgewater, while Coco operates in Fulton Market, Lincoln Park, Lake View, Little Italy and Bucktown, among other neighborhoods.

Between the lines: Neither company delivers on the South Side, but Ald. William Hall promised earlier this summer they would be coming to his Chatham, Auburn Gresham, Englewood and West Woodlawn ward.

• Serve expects to operate in the 6th Ward by the end of the year, Yariel Diaz, director of government affairs, tells Axios.

State of play: Serve delivers from more than 670 Chicago restaurants, a spokesperson says, and has completed more than 27,000 deliveries.

• Proponents of delivery robots say they cut emissions and free up the streets, as fewer cars are making deliveries.

Context: The machines haven't been without problems. Two high-profile incidents included a Serve robot crashing into a West Town bus shelter last March and a Coco smashing into a bus stop in Old Town the same week.

• Serve posted a clever apology last April on the bus shelter it smashed.
• The company reported seven minor safety incidents since last September, according to a spokesperson.

The latest: A "swarm" of Coco robots piled up in Lincoln Park earlier this month, captured in a now-viral video by Chicagoan Becca Ostien.

• "Without agile feet, no one could have gotten by," Ostien told CBS.
• "A sidewalk deployment error caused several Coco robots to reroute simultaneously as they were leaving their station at the start of their daily routes," Coco's Carl Hansen tells Axios in a statement.
• Hansen says the robots were back to normal within minutes.

Friction point: Blocked sidewalks fuel some of the pushback against the robots, especially from Lakeview resident Josh Robertson.

• Robertson launched a petition last year requesting the city pause the pilot.
• As of early this month, that campaign gathered more than 4,550 signatures.
• Robertson says he shared petition data with the Business Affairs and Consumer Protection and the Chicago Department of Transportation, which oversee the robot program, and he was told that residents should report problems to 311.
• "I'm concerned that the departments are potentially overly reliant on residents to report incidents through 311 and on the companies themselves to self-report incidents," Robertson tells Axios.
• More than 1,000 petition signers reported collisions, injuries, dangerous obstruction, erratic behavior, and concerns about jobs and surveillance, Robertson adds.

The other side: "We are aware of the petition and recognize that a number of Chicagoans have taken the time to share their perspectives. We continue to be open to and welcome community dialogue and feedback," Serve's Diaz says.

• "On accessibility specifically, we've taken concrete action: our partnership with BlindSquare [an app] shares real-time sidewalk hazard data with blind and low-vision pedestrians here in Chicago and in the other cities we operate in," Hansen from Coco tells Axios about the concerns the petition raises.

What's next: The PDD program will not continue past next May unless the City Council takes action.

What they're saying: "We are in the process of collecting constituent feedback on delivery robots in the 34th Ward and encourage residents to share their experience with our team. So far, we've received very few complaints," Ald. Bill Conway tells Axios in a statement.

• Conway's Loop, South Loop, West Loop, Greektown and Little Italy ward was one of the first to get Coco Robots in 2024.
• Ald. Daniel La Spata decided in February not to extend Serve's reach in his Bucktown, Logan Square, Wicker Park and West Town.
• "1st Ward residents have made it clear to me that the congestion and accessibility concerns delivery robots create outweigh the benefits they may provide," LaSpata says in a statement to Axios.
• "We need delivery options that make our streets and sidewalks safer for everyone and I'm not convinced delivery robots help us accomplish that goal."

The bottom line: The robots are here to stay for at least another eight months. After that, Chicagoans can go back to fighting for sidewalk space from strollers, bikes and tourists.