In SF they would be taken quickly by the homeless for parts, probably the batteries most of all. That and rummaged through for drugs, or repurposed to deliver drugs.

Is this what happens with scooters and lime bikes etc? Because it always strikes me that they’re easy targets for cannibalism yet nobody seems to do it.

They do. Tons of them are stolen or destroyed regularly. The company just keeps buying new ones.

It was common for people to vandalize and throw them in bodies of water for a while before people got used to the idea. I still occasionally see some repurposed from time to time

Surely the robot will have the beta crime fighting package installed.

Pay a little extra for the M134 Minigun attachment and you’re good to go.

Having expensive high tech robots picking up litter while there is an ongoing social crisis like homelessness sounds pretty dystopian.

Have you seen San Francisco right now?

I haven’t been to the city in 12 years. What is it like right now?

Like every downtown in the US. In short: not good.

I don’t want to say you guys overstate things, but literally every downtown in the US? Might be time to move. I was regularly visiting San Francisco in the late 2010s when the tech bro community was really ginning this story up. Was it an ugly clash of both the promise and the failure of US economics? Yeah. Was their shit on the streets? Also yeah. Did I ever feel unsafe? Not really. Anecdata but I remain skeptical because of these Helen Lovejoy-level overstatements.