Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Retired Professor, 78, Arrested for Blocking a Delivery Robot, Says She Will Do It Again

The robot was rolling along a Center City sidewalk with somebody's lunch, and Carolyn Marvin stepped in front of it and stayed there. That small act, repeated for months on Philadelphia streets, ended in handcuffs on October 14, when police cited the 78-year-old retired University of Pennsylvania communications professor for disorderly conduct after she refused their orders to move.

"I was under the impression that I had more rights than the robot did," Marvin said, laughing, in an account published by CNN on Saturday.

A protest measured in minutes

Marvin says blocking the robots became a habit after Uber Eats launched its self-driving delivery fleet in Philadelphia in March, the fourth city where the company offers robot delivery. When she meets one, she stands in front of it for 10 or 15 minutes, moving as it moves. The only harm, she says, is that an office worker's lunch might be delayed by 15 minutes at most.

She says the robots displace low-income delivery workers, pose a physical hazard on sidewalks, and raise privacy questions through their cameras. "I also think that I have a First Amendment right to protest the abuses of corporations in public space, in the same public space that the robots are occupying," she said. She never expected an arrest, she says, because "I wasn't impeding any persons. I was impeding a machine." Others have been filmed sitting on the robots and kicking them. Marvin just stands there.

The arrest on October 14

On October 14, Marvin was walking home from a flu shot, enchilada sauce in one hand and chicken biryani takeout in the other, when she met a robot and stopped in front of it. Local reporting placed the stop on Filbert Street near Reading Terminal Market. A larger than normal crowd gathered, some supportive and some critical, and she suspects a member of the crowd called the police. Officers handcuffed her, put her in the back of a squad car and gave her a citation for disorderly conduct.

Philadelphia police said in an email that officers had responded to a report of "criminal mischief involving a delivery robot." When they arrived, "officers encountered a female who was refusing to allow a delivery robot to pass," the police wrote. "Police issued multiple commands directing the female to move; however, she refused to comply." A friend of Marvin's summed up the charge for her: "Well, you got a disorderly conduct charge for impeding capitalism."

A law that treats robots as pedestrians

In 2020, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that classifies autonomous delivery robots, called "personal delivery devices" in the law, as pedestrians, not vehicles. Democrats, labor unions and accessibility advocates largely opposed it, warning about jobs and safety. Republicans backed it as a technological advance.

The law means a vehicle must yield to a delivery robot on a crosswalk, just as it would to a person, said John Mattiacci, a Philadelphia personal injury attorney. In theory, humans still rank first: "Personal delivery devices must yield to other pedestrians and pedalcyclists in a pedestrian area," he said. Uber Eats did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.

Marvin says she will not surrender the sidewalk. Asked whether she plans to block robots again after her arrest, she was short: "Oh yeah." This time, she says, she will keep an eye out for the police.