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# How Silicon Valley lobbied to put delivery robots on UK pavements, and won
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/starship-technologies-delivery-robots-uk-pavements-silicon-valley-lobbying/
- Published: 2026-11-06T12:47:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-06T12:47:44.000Z
- Description: Revealed: Ministers allowed our streets to become ‘test ground’ for robots amid lobbying from Starship Technologies
- Author: Indra Warnes
- Tags: big tech, disability rights, robots, Labour Party, Andy Burnham, John Healey, Keir Starmer

Lisa Johnson can’t stop talking about the Highways Act of 1835\. By her own admission, she’s brought up the law “once or twice, a day, over the space of four years”.

As she has told politicians and LinkedIn followers alike, Johnson believes the legislation is blocking Starship Technologies, the San Francisco-headquartered tech start-up where she is vice-president of global public affairs, from unleashing its automated delivery robots on England’s pavements. 

But she may not have to worry for much longer. In September, chancellor John Healey announced “new sandboxing powers” to let businesses “safely test frontier technologies, from pavement robots to drones to lifesaving medical treatments”. The move comes despite concern from unions, campaign groups and members of the public over the risks to pedestrians, privacy (delivery robots are typically mounted with around 12 cameras), and the livelihoods of the country’s hundreds of thousands of couriers.

Now, openDemocracy can reveal that the expected law change follows an intense lobbying effort by Starship Technologies, the industry leader, which has concentrated its expansion efforts in the UK. Johnson, who is married to Angela Rayner’s top adviser and has close personal ties to senior figures in the Labour Party, led a years-long charm offensive resulting in back-to-back meetings with senior government officials. 

Yet Starship’s battle to put its robots on pavements in the UK goes beyond a company using its political connections to get its way. 

openDemocracy’s review of government emails obtained under Freedom of Information law, interviews with experts and campaigners, and site visits to observe the robots in operation reveal Starship has followed a familiar Big Tech playbook: privately lobbying and publicly railing against regulations, while rapidly deploying unproven and not-yet-legal technologies. Companies such as Uber, Amazon, Meta and Alphabet have used elements of this model to reorder the world to their advantage – to the detriment of communities, workers, small businesses, and the environment.

In the process, England’s pavements have become the site of a dangerous experiment, says Living Streets, a charity promoting pedestrian safety. A US tech company hoping to profit from replacing couriers with robots has made UK pedestrians – including children, the elderly, parents with prams, and people with mobility or sight vulnerabilities – its unwitting “human testers”. In a sign of what could be coming, tech companies have successfully lobbied authorities in the US city of Philadelphia to classify their delivery robots [as “pedestrians”](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/31/us/philadelphia-woman-delivery-robots-cec?ref=opendemocracy.net), giving them similar rights to human users.

The Highways Act bans “carriages” from pavements, said Tanya Braun, a director at Living Streets, but it is unclear if Starship’s robots count as carriages. “We have had a number of MPs write questions to ministers about this; the answer just tends to be, ‘it’s a legal grey area,’” she explained. But there are robots operating in towns and cities across England. So while there is no legislation and no legal framework, these robots are still being allowed to operate on our pavements.”

Weeks after Braun and I spoke, Starship accused Living Streets of “selectively editing” a video showing one of its robots colliding with Emily Green, an 18-year-old wheelchair user. The company said it will report the charity to the regulator if it fails to correct the record.

“Starship claim I moved into their robot’s path but dropped kerbs are placed there for the benefit of wheelchair users and I don’t have the luxury of not using them,” Green told [The Times](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/robot-delivery-crash-video-disabled-person-staged-m8lhcx29t?ref=opendemocracy.net) last week. “A Silicon Valley tech giant using a legal grey area to privatise pavements for profit should not take priority over my safety and mobility.”

## **Aim for Mars, hit Leeds**

Starship’s origins lie in a 2013 competition to design a NASA rover to collect dust samples from Mars. Estonian computer programmer and Skype co-founder Ahti Heinla entered his design but was ineligible for the prize as he was not a US citizen. Still, seemingly inspired, he launched his own robot fleet on Earth the following year. 

The company told openDemocracy its decision to make robots that run on pavements, rather than roads, was rooted in “sustainability”. “It makes little environmental sense to transport a 2lb meal in a two tonne car,” it said, adding: “Pavements also lead straight to people’s front doors, so a delivery can be completed without a van, a parking space or an engine.”

The London borough of Greenwich became the first place in the world to temporarily trial Starship’s robots in 2016, and the company officially launched in the UK in partnership with Co-op two years later. Today, the company says it operates in 27 locations across eight countries, including in partnership with Uber Eats in six English towns and cities. openDemocracy understands Co-op no longer works with Starship.

Starship told openDemocracy its robots have completed more than 11 million trips globally. “The unit economics are clear: our robots deliver groceries at a cost $3-4 lower per delivery than traditional courier fulfilment,” Heinla said in a press release earlier this year, [adding:](https://www.starship.xyz/press/starship-technologies-doubles-down-on-grocery/?ref=opendemocracy.net) “The opportunity in grocery is generational.” The company, which does not disclose revenue figures, has raised about $281m over multiple funding rounds, [according to Tracxn](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/starship-technologies/%5F%5FM8hQlunMFlSbhbXsrUi2%5Fsx7SBNbYMiSML6DvzoI67o/funding-and-investors?ref=opendemocracy.net#funding-rounds).

In North America, pavement delivery robots have been banned in [Chicago](https://interestingengineering.com/videos/chicago-bans-delivery-robots?ref=opendemocracy.net), [Toronto](https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/01/sidewalk-robot-delivery-safety/?ref=opendemocracy.net), [Ottawa](https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/robot-delivery-services-banned-on-ottawa-streets-city-says/?ref=opendemocracy.net), and [much of San Francisco](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/10/san-francisco-delivery-robots-laws?ref=opendemocracy.net) after complaints from residents and disability rights advocates. But here in the UK, Starship is expanding operations – although it says it is hindered by there being both too much and not enough regulation. While Johnson has focused her ire on the Highways Act, Heinla has [complained](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/soon-there-will-be-thousands-of-delivery-robots-on-british-streets-8mtzg0537?t=1735819122117&ref=opendemocracy.net) that the lack of a national law governing robots is forcing his firm to negotiate with individual councils. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/10/Delivery-Robot_1_1.gif)

In 2020, while Labour was still in opposition, the company began courting the party’s senior figures, treating newly crowned leader Keir Starmer to a demonstration from one of its robots at a Co-op in Milton Keynes. Fast-forward four years, and Starmer, then the prime minister, invited Starship to a breakfast he hosted with tech firms in Estonia in late 2024.

Over the following nine months, Johnson, who began her career as an assistant in the office of Labour MP Jon Trickett in the 2000s, became a regular feature at government events. She appeared as an expert witness at a meeting of the Science, Innovation and Tech Committee; met with Starmer and then-tech secretary Peter Kyle in Downing Street for London Tech Week; and hosted a fringe panel discussion at the Labour Party Conference. 

On each occasion, Johnson raised the need to update the Highways Act, to seemingly little appetite from ministers. “The PM remembered his last trip to meet the robots years ago as an opposition shadow minister,” she wrote on LinkedIn after her trip to No 10\. “We might have mentioned regulations still haven’t changed…”.

Publicly, Starship was threatening to exit the UK market. Privately, it wasn’t giving up. Emails obtained by openDemocracy show that in September last year, Ryan Case, Starship’s public affairs and corporate communications manager for Europe, emailed a junior minister in the Department for Transport (DfT) seeking “a call with you to go over where things are in terms of regulation for personal delivery devices”. 

For three weeks, Case received no reply. 

Then, on 6 October, The Times published a glowing account of Starship’s robots, drawing solely on a report paid for by Starship and written using its “data, expertise and insight”. The report claimed that “expanding robotic deliveries could yield a £125m increase in grocery spending and generate a productivity gain equivalent to 300,000 working hours saved”. 

Johnson sent a link to The Times article to another transport minister, Simon Lightwood, asking again for a meeting. “We would greatly appreciate the chance to discuss government plans for the sector and how clearer regulation might be achieved,” she said. “Starship would be more than flexible around your diary, and be happy to meet either in London or at the DfT in Leeds if that were helpful.” 

She needn’t have bothered. As The Times landed on desks across Westminster earlier that day, the government had finally bitten; Lightwood had written to Case inviting Starship in for a chat two hours earlier.

On 28 October, Johnson finally got her meeting with the government. Twenty-four hours later, she got her second meeting with the government.

In the first, she and Starship founder Heinla, who happened to be in town – “a lovely addition to the meeting”, according to the civil servant tasked with scheduling it – sat down with Lightwood in Parliament. 

Johnson knew Lightwood well; just three months earlier, he’d watched her marry Nick Parrott, Angela Rayner’s longtime chief of staff. The wedding was a veritable who’s who of the Labour government and Leeds local governance, with [Politico](https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/the-ballroom-where-it-happens/?ref=opendemocracy.net) reporting that it was attended by at least six serving or former members of Starmer’s cabinet, including Rayner, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, and ex-transport secretary Louise Haigh (now Burnham’s most senior minister), as well as at least 16 junior ministers and backbench MPs, and a handful of parliamentary private secretaries. Also present were Starmer’s political director, Claire Reynolds; several members of the House of Lords, including former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson; West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin; Leeds City Council leader James Lewis, and Leeds Council executive member Helen Hayde.

An internal DfT briefing sent to Lightwood ahead of the meeting and seen by openDemocracy reveals that months earlier, Starship wrote to another minister, Jim McMahon (also present at Johnson’s wedding), seeking an amendment to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill “to include additional regulation-making powers that would effectively allow the legalisation of pavement robots”. This would effectively hand decisions on whether or not to permit the robots over to local councils.

The briefing advises Lightwood that pavement delivery robots would be “out of scope of the Bill”, explaining: “The government’s view is vehicles should continue to be regulated by central government consistently across Great Britain.” Yet this week the government rejected openDemocracy’s request to see the correspondence between McMahon and Starship, claiming it is “not in the public interest” because it relates to “live policy” decisions.

The day after Johnson sat down with Lightwood, she returned to Westminster for a face-to-face with Tom Layfield, a special adviser in the Department for Transport, organised and attended by Woburn Partners, a lobbying firm founded by two former Labour advisers. Special advisers are not required to declare their meetings with businesses, meaning the public had no way of knowing this took place. 

This year, the government appointed Johnson to sit on its inaugural Robotics Advisory Group, tasked with shaping the UK’s policy on robots.

Starship told openDemocracy: “Like any company working in an innovative and fast-growing sector, we want the law to keep pace with today’s technology and with how people now shop and consume. As one of the pioneers of robot delivery, we’ve been open about this from the start. 

“Over several years, we’ve engaged with government, parliament and policymakers on a cross-party basis on these issues, through meetings, consultation responses and giving evidence to select committees.”

## **Robot hunting in West Yorkshire**

“You’ll be waiting a while to see one in action,” the man behind me laughs. 

I’m in a greengrocer in Headingley, a buzzy neighbourhood not far from Leeds’ city centre, home to a large student population. I travelled here this morning to see Starship’s robots at work, a goal that increasingly feels like saying you went to London because you really wanted to spot King Charles.

I was excited to see two stationary robots – at knee-height, they’re bigger than I expected – within minutes of getting off the bus, but realised after hanging around staring at them for a while that they weren’t budging. Continuing up the high street, I asked in a couple of takeaways – national chains and independents – whether they use the robots for deliveries, but was met with blank stares. “The white robots? There’s some parked up there on the corner?” The servers shook their heads slowly, making me feel like I suggested they try delivering fried chicken via carrier pigeon. 

The two student-age boys serving in the greengrocer appear similarly perplexed when I ask if they see many robots going past. I’m starting to think the robots are some kind of inside joke, when the customer behind overhears. He says I’m unlikely to see any around here – confusing, given Starship has been active in this area for 10 months – but suggests I try Adel, the leafy north Leeds suburb that became the first place in the city to get the robots in November 2022, as part of a partnership with Co-op. 

“No, we don’t use them anymore,” a woman in Adel’s Co-op tells me. What? Since when? She shrugs. “Maybe a few weeks ago.” She’s not sure why they stopped, but thinks it could be to do with the A-road directly outside the shop, busy even at this time on a Monday afternoon. “The robots couldn’t cross it,” she says. “You could only really order if you lived on this side.” There’s a bad joke in there somewhere, but the problem was seemingly bigger than this fairly major flaw; the woman thinks even the people on this side of the road realised a human delivery was quicker.

It’s a similar story in a Greek takeaway in Hyde Park, back on the edge of the city centre. Human couriers, “who can take three orders at once”, are quicker and more efficient than robots, which “can only do one at a time”, says the man behind the counter, who visibly thaws after reassurance that I don’t work for Starship. Plus, he adds, with “the robots, you have to go outside and load them up”, which just isn’t possible when he’s busy behind the counter. Humans will come in to collect the orders.

Across the street, I finally have a breakthrough. A cafe that does use robots! But, says the woman at the till, translating for an older man in the kitchen whom I take to be the owner, “probably only once a month”. Is it their decision to mostly use couriers instead? No, no, she says, translating again, “He thinks the customer decides how it’s delivered.” 

I step outside and ponder this, and that’s when I see it: a Starship robot, in motion, rattling along the pavement towards me. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/10/Delivery-Robot-drop.gif)

I follow the robot closely, watching without interfering. I am David Attenborough; this is my seal cub. I will let orcas tear it apart if need be. That’s nature, baby. We reach our first hurdle: a road crossing. But it’s almost rush hour now, and the pavements are full; a pedestrian also looking to cross presses the button. The robot notices the green man before I do. How did it do that? No time to question it; it’s off. I follow it around a corner, where it literally bounces off a large porthole – I hope the recipient hasn’t ordered a carton of eggs – before pausing to recalibrate itself. 

At another junction, this time without a traffic light, the robot takes a full 35 seconds to psyche itself up to enter an empty road. “Naturally risk-averse, they will take time to assess the route ahead and the road to understand if there’s traffic coming before deciding if it’s safe to cross,” says the Starship website. 

The robot comes into its own as it turns into the nearby park. “Our robots travel on sidewalks at the speed of a walking pedestrian,” says Starship. That may be, but away from the *sidewalk* and without the threat of cars, it speeds up to its maximum four miles per hour. I have to power-walk in an obvious effort to keep up – if I knew a single soul in Leeds, I’d be mortified – desperate to get there in time to talk to whoever’s food it is delivering.

Luckily for me, an orca emerges. A whole pod, actually. The teenage boys descend, surrounding the robot. They kick it, pull at its flag-bearing antenna, and obstruct its path. One sits on it. The robot bucks around, trying and failing to throw him off, a futuristic mechanical bull. “I’m recording you now,” the robot pleads in an American accent that makes the teenagers laugh harder. They do back off, though; I’m not sure if it was the robot’s threat of surveillance, boredom, or the watching adults, myself included, but they retreat, and the robot continues on its way. It looks relieved somehow.

At the other end of the park I realise this robot is not making a delivery at all; it’s returning from one. It parks up alongside three of its mates, flag still askew – a war wound.

It’s around this point that I realise the only way I’m going to see a robot deliver any food is if I order it myself. My best bet, I think, is to order from the one cafe that has told me it definitely uses the robots. I am exactly 0.5 miles away; Starship says its robots carry out deliveries of up to four times this distance. I order a panini I don’t really want, and Uber Eats prompts me to opt in to “autonomous delivery”, promising: “We’ll try to match you with a robot delivery” and “If a robot delivers your order, you’ll save on tip”. It feels icky, but I agree in the name of science. 

Fifteen minutes later, I’m assigned a definitely human rider named Mohammed. Disappointed, I message him saying he doesn’t need to bother fulfilling the order; he can just eat the panini if he likes, and I’ll still tip him for it. “Thank you, dear,” he replies, clearly confused; I have fundamentally misunderstood Uber Eats’ business model. 

Mohammed brings me the panini. It’s pretty good, to be fair. 

## **Red flags and grey areas**

When the UK government set out to regulate the use of motor vehicles in the Locomotive Act of 1865, it ruled that any “self-propelled vehicle” had to be accompanied by a team of at least three: a driver, a stoker to tend to the engine, and a flagman. The latter, generally a young boy, was required by law to walk at least 60 yards (around 55 meters) ahead of the vehicle, waving a red flag – or, at night, a red lantern – to warn pedestrians and horse riders of its presence. 

It would be 31 years before a car could legally travel on British roads without the need for this walking escort. 

The Red Flag Act, as the law came to be known, is remembered as an example of a government over-regulating and restricting technological advances to appease an anxious public (and a lobbying effort by horse-drawn carriage and railway operators). 

More than 160 years later, critics have accused the Starmer and Burnham governments of the opposite: under-regulating amid pressure from tech firms – leading ministers to turn a blind eye as a nascent technology is trialled on our streets, despite being technically illegal. 

This “legal grey area” creates confusion over liability in the event of an accident, said Living Streets’ Tanya Braun. “The trouble is, because nothing is legal at the moment, if anything happens, who does someone get in touch with? Something happens to them, or their car, or their personal belongings; who do they get in touch with? If they contact Starship, is Starship seriously going to just pay them out?”

Asked about this, Starship told openDemocracy: “Safety is our number one priority and incidents are incredibly rare, but of course as with any form of transport accidents do happen on occasion. Starship is responsible for our operations and our fleet – liability always rests with us. We hold comprehensive insurance. Any incident would be dealt with through our insurance process.”

Yet a legal battle in the United States may offer further insight. Trudy Perez, a 73-year-old car park attendant, is suing Starship after allegedly suffering permanent impairment and a spinal fracture when she was knocked down by one of its robots while working at Arizona State University in 2023\. 

Perez says the robot suddenly changed direction, knocking her off her feet – an account that appears to align with the [campus police department’s review of footage](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/de/1c/c1056ed442fbb413a67da29c9771/23-2385.pdf?ref=opendemocracy.net) from two nearby CCTV cameras. “The robot suddenly reverses and strikes the victim, causing victim to fall down on her back,” the police report says. “The robot then moves westbound several feet, then suddenly reverses again back toward victim, who is still laying on the ground, the robot stops before striking the victim again.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/10/Delivery-Robot-egged.gif)

[Arizona state law](https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/54leg/2R/summary/S.1305TPS.DOCX.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) requires delivery robot operators to ensure, among other things, that their devices have a general liability insurance policy of at least $100,000 and are actively monitored by a human operator. Perez’s lawsuit claims Starship failed to operate in a reasonably safe manner; that its robot, which was still being tested, was defective; and that an unnamed Starship employee tasked with monitoring the robot was negligent. Starship’s attorneys, meanwhile, argue her injuries were caused by her own negligence, a third party, and were pre-existing. 

Starship told openDemocracy it does not comment on ongoing litigation, and Perez’s lawyers declined to be interviewed before her case is heard by a jury next year. But when told that the robots are on the brink of being legalised in the UK, the law firm said: “Given what we’ve learned, we wouldn’t feel comfortable with these robots roaming our streets.”

The British government did not respond to our questions about whether there is legislation or other safeguards in place to set out liability in the event that a pedestrian is involved in a collision that was the fault of a pavement delivery robot.

Starship’s robots have already been observed in near-collisions on pavements across England, including by academics analysing how people respond to delivery robots. “We often saw pedestrians enacting very subtle, fleeting, but fluid changes to their embodied ways of traversing the street to somehow accommodate robot behaviour,” the researchers noted in [a paper published at the 2024 International Human-Robot Interaction Conference](https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3610977.3634936?ref=opendemocracy.net).

In what they described as one of “many such instances” from their 12 hours of fieldwork in Milton Keynes and Northampton, the researchers saw a pedestrian forced to steady themselves to avoid falling after a Starship robot “brakes abruptly”. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/11/data-src-image-c766b13e-d372-4cb1-ad87-fea999b5e3f5.png)

**Research by Hannah R M Pelikan, Stuart Reeves, Marina N Cantarutti*

“Robot mobility can be illegible to members of the street, unaccountable to the situation (there was no street-readable obstruction here), and therefore difficult to anticipate”, the research paper said. This can cause “potential dangers to members of the street, with the robot itself turning into an obstacle, ironically – it turns out – as part of its own obstacle avoidance routines”.

Stuart Reeves, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor at Nottingham University, told openDemocracy that “for the most part, interactions \[with the robots\] come off fine, but there’s always kind of issues and problems that occur every now and then”. It is not clear whether these occasional issues pose particular risks to pedestrians with disabilities, he said, describing this as “a big gap in our knowledge” due to a lack of research.

Starship said it has “worked with charities on inclusive flag and robot design, robot behaviour and cane detection” and offers “decommissioned robots to guide dog-training centres”. It added: “We work closely with disability groups to both provide a good service to Disabled residents and operate sensitively around those with disabilities. Our customer surveys show around 25% of our regular customers have a disability or live with someone else who does.”

But for Lily Higgitt, a project coordinator at Living Streets’ Leeds branch, the robots are “dressed up as helping Disabled people”, while enabling their ostracisation from society. 

Over coffee, Higgitt explained that she worries about the long-term effects of further isolating some people with disabilities in their homes and removing what could be one of their key points of contact with the outside world. “You’re replacing a small interaction they have with a person in a day,” she said, “replacing that interaction with a machine, not even a human face.”

While Higgitt is “not necessarily anti-the robotic technology”, she doesn’t see the point in it. We already have better answers to the issues it purports to solve, she said: humans can deliver food and medicines to other humans, using bikes and e-bikes to reduce deliveries by emission-producing cars. 

In short, she sighed, delivery robots are “just another solution looking for a problem”.

## **Rise of the machines**

Starship Technologies is in the habit of hiring executives who built their careers on the front lines of the fight for workers’ rights.

Lisa Johnson spent almost 13 years working for trade unions, including nine years at GMB, the UK’s third-largest union; her colleague, Ryan Case, spent more than eight at Unite, the second-largest union. This work may now appear at odds with warnings from unions, delivery drivers and customers about their current employer’s impact on the labour market. 

In an email to the government seen by openDemocracy, Johnson said investing in the robots would “create 555 new, high-skilled jobs”. This claim was repeated in a debrief Starship sent to ministers after its initial meeting with the Department for Transport. 

What Starship failed to mention is the scale of the potential job losses it could contribute to. There are an estimated [295,000 active delivery drivers employed in the UK, around 120,000 of whom are thought to operate in the gig economy](https://pegasuscouriers.co.uk/2025/01/how-many-delivery-drivers-in-the-uk-and-is-there-still-a-shortage-normal/?ref=opendemocracy.net) – many of them delivering food via app-based platforms such as those used by Starship robots.

“I know that there are like political discussions and nuances around delivery riders and e-bikes and stuff,” Higgitt told openDemocracy, “but people that do those jobs do tend to be quite vulnerable, so I think taking those jobs away is like, it feels really bad.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/10/Delivery-Robot-Sudden-stop.gif)

Asked about this, Starship said: “Robot delivery is part of a multi-modal delivery mix to meet the growing demand for quick-commerce. Robots are one part of the solution to creating a sustainable delivery system that is affordable, fair and environmentally friendly. We’re proud of the jobs we create in the UK – our robot fleet needs humans to look after it. We employ robot technicians, operations managers and field assistants, and we hope to employ more as delivery continues to scale.”

But at school pick-up time in Leeds, these corporate claims came up against a tough critic: an eight-year-old girl snacking on chocolate-covered raisins.

I’d just stopped her family outside a supermarket to ask their opinions on the robots. Her mum said she’d never used them, and doesn’t “really like their presence”; when I asked why, the young child jumped in forcefully, shouting: “Because they steal people’s jobs!” 

She seemed embarrassed by her sudden outburst, shyly offering me a handful of raisins. Smiling, her mum explained that her daughters “go to school around here, and lots of the dads are delivery drivers, and they feel a bit threatened or intimidated by the robots”.

Starship told openDemocracy that council surveys in Leeds and Cambridgeshire “show real positive sentiment” towards robot delivery, which “adds a little fun to your groceries or takeaway”. “People love the robots,” it said. “Kids dress as robots for Halloween.” 

But on the edge of Leeds city centre, there’s a generation of children who, if Starship and other companies like it get their way, will grow up in a world of robots. Those kids aren’t wearing cute delivery robot costumes; they’re fearing for their parents’ jobs.