I had to go to LA not too long ago. It was the last day of the trip; it was just my son and me. We saw delivery bots everywhere. We wanted to get something delivered to us by an autonomous bot. So, we ordered some Shake Shack that was less than a half block from our hotel. Luckily for us, a robot was picked to bring it! We watched as the bot, approaching from a distance, crossed the street and drove past us. We followed it. We were so excited. The Shake Shack people put the order in the bot. It drove about 15 feet. Stopped. Then called a human delivery person to bring it to us.

The human delivery person got there, but they couldn’t open the bot. The bot called tech support. A human tech guy showed up to fix the bot. He had no clue what happened. The bot was fine. We had to cancel the order and reorder. Unfortunately, we had to get it and carry it the 100 feet ourselves.

I think the bot, “Nubbin,” either hated humans or was just tired of working. Maybe both.

The background of the toon is a photograph of the street and the REAL Nubbin itself. That’s where it stopped. I turned the pic black and white to fit my regular motif. Later that night, we went out there to see Nubbin again, and the whole sidewalk there was packed with delivery robots from a few different companies. I think there were about 18 or 20. They were all moving around each other or waiting for order pickups. Wish I took a picture of all those bots. Nubbin was long gone, BTW.

Maybe AI and robots taking over isn’t going to be so complete. This bot had to call 2 humans to help after all. Twist of fate; will AI worry we’re going to replace it?

See the rest of the environmental campaign drawings and the rest of my cartoons in the Engineering on Friday comic gallery.