Caesars Palace on Las Vegas Boulevard, also known as 'the Strip' in Las Vegas, Nevada. Serve Robotics is a sidewalk delivery robot company which was spun out of Postmates when it was acquired by Uber. It’s been operating independently, but recently became publicly tradable via a reverse merger As part of their public filings, Serve disclosed that they plan to sell ads on the robots as they travel the sidewalks, and that this could account for 25 to 50% of their revenue.
, it does open a public policy question. What are the consequences of robots driving the streets and sidewalks, not to serve people or cargo, but only to carry ads? Having robots do this makes financial sense to the companies that provide this service. They’ll do it cheaply. With electric drive, it will be even cheaper, particularly on the slow crowded streets they prefer. The cheaper it gets, the more common it will be. The problem, of course, is these trucks add to congestion on the streets, emissions to the air and fill our world with even more advertising, and that’s surely going to create pushback.