CHICAGO — Food delivery robots have shattered two city bus shelters within the last week, fueling heated discussion amongst Chicago humans who say they shouldn’t have to share the public way with the apparently freewheeling automatons.

The first crash happened when a Serve Robotics device collided with a bus shelter in the West Town neighborhood. The second collision, involving a robot operated by California-based Coco Robotics, occurred at a bus shelter at North Avenue and Larrabee Street in Old Town.

The West Town crash happened Sunday morning, according to Bayard Elfvin, the CEO of local construction company Centre Construction Group, which has offices at 469 N. Racine Ave.

Security footage provided by Elfvin shows the robot rolling directly into the side panel of a bus shelter, which shatters and showers the robot and sidewalk around it with what appears to be glass shards.

Another video of the incident — posted on Reddit and taken in what appears to be the moments immediately following the collision — shows the robot slowly removing itself from the scene of the crash, shards of glass falling off its lid with each scooch.

Video apparently taken in the aftermath of a second bus shelter crash published by Block Club Chicago and CBS News this week shows a stationary Coco robot next to a pile of shattered glass beneath the bus shelter.

In a statement, Coco confirmed the crash occurred Tuesday and said it was conducting an “internal investigation” to determine its cause.

“Across more than one million miles of deliveries, this is the first time one of our robots has collided with a structure like this,” said Coco’s head of government relations Carl Hansen. Hansen, who also serves as the company’s head of safety, noted that the Cocos can only go about 5 mph.

He described the crash as “rare” and “isolated.”

“Our team responded immediately, retrieved the robot and cleared the area,” Hansen said.

Serve also said it was “aware of the incident involving one of our robots in Chicago” and that its team responded “quickly” to clean up the area.

The company said it was “reviewing what happened to make improvements” and that it took the matter “very seriously.”

“We have also been in contact with local stakeholders and are committed to addressing any concerns directly,” Serve said.

The collisions have added fuel to ongoing criticism of the robots, which are operating under the confines of a pilot program that will end in May 2027 without further action from the City Council.

Kyle Lucas of the pedestrian advocacy group Better Streets Chicago said the collisions and the damage to city infrastructure are a sign the robots “should be sent packing.”

“Until these sidewalk robots were here, we didn’t have any vehicles roaming around on our sidewalks smashing through bus shelters,” Lucas said. “This is a problem that didn’t exist before.”

Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, expressed displeasure over the proliferation of the delivery robots on Wednesday: “Two in seven days is not great,” he said.

“The case continues to be made that … it’s hard for this technology to operate safely in the city of Chicago,” said La Spata. Neither of this week’s crashes occurred in the 1st Ward, but La Spata said his constituents in a survey overwhelmingly opposed expanding the devices there. “I think it is fair for us to be asking, ‘What does the city gain? What do our residents gain?’ And I don’t know that there’s always an accurate accounting of the impacts and the benefits.“

Others don’t mind the robots so much. “They don’t really bother me,” said Elfvin, whose security footage captured the West Town crash.

“I just think they have some issues to work out,” he added.

The delivery robots first started roaming the streets of Chicago in 2024, when Coco deployed a set of robots. The Cocos were joined last fall by members of Serve’s fleet. Each Serve robot bears a name and sports headlights resembling eyes.

Both companies possess “emerging business” permits as part of the city’s personal delivery pilot program, which enables companies like Serve and Coco to partner with local restaurants on food order delivery.

The program is operated jointly by Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection and the city’s Department of Transportation. In a joint statement Wednesday afternoon, the two city agencies confirmed the crashes involved robots “making initial contact with the glass within the bus vestibule.”

CDOT and BACP said they are in contact with both companies to “better understand the circumstances that led to the occurrences” and noted that Serve and Coco are responsible for the cost of repairing the damage.

The city said the companies worked directly with JCDecaux, the multinational French corporation that maintains Chicago’s bus shelters, to have the sites cleaned and glass replaced.

Glass on both bus shelters had been replaced by midmorning Wednesday, though some shards of glass remained nearby, according to a Tribune photojournalist. A JCDecaux representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Speaking at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the pilot program is “serving its purpose,” and giving the city “an opportunity to see what works, and then the things that we obviously need to improve upon.”

Last year, Coco and Serve reported just a handful of safety incidents in the city despite logging nearly 30,000 sidewalk miles between them.

The Tribune previously reported on some of those run-ins. For instance, one 33-year-old Lincoln Park resident said he had tripped over a Serve robot whilst trying to catch a bus last fall, necessitating stitches and a tetanus shot. About that incident, a Serve representative said, “The person simply walked away, and there were no visible marks on that person,” but that the company later “(processed) a claim on their behalf.”

A couple of the incidents reported to the city appeared to have been human versus machine.

In July, a Coco robot was “recovered” from a canal, according to city records. And in December, three Serve robots were “flipped.” Two of those robots, Cassius and Sandra, were stationary, but a third named Valerie was making a food delivery at the time.

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Chicago Tribune’s Eileen Meslar contributed.

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