This week, we learned that when DC residents see a literal robot meandering down the sidewalk on a random Tuesday, the immediate assumption is that it’s handing out parking tickets.
Soo, are robots giving parking tickets now in washington DC? I saw a @DDOTDC robot today . I have enough @WashProbs ! Perhaps we need a crime fighting robot instead.. just sayin😳#ddotdc #dmv pic.twitter.com/6BQsO1QzoH
— Jade Un-Edited (@jadeunedited) September 4, 2024
To be fair, that’s an understandable reaction. But, according to DC Department of Transportation spokesperson German Vigil, parking enforcement is not the name of this little guy’s game. Instead, the red rover is part of a pilot program to improve the District’s infrastructure, starting with street signs.
“Normally, there are hundreds of our staff that, every year, go out into the streets to make sure the signs are correct,” Vigil says. “This is just an added component to make sure that we’re able to maintain it.”
For example, if a street sign has fallen or is damaged, the goal is for the robot to collect that data and report it to DDOT before a human being even has the chance to call 311 (that said, Vigil stresses that residents should still call 311 if they see a problem with a sign).
There is only one of this government-employed Wall-E in the city, and for now, he’ll be stationed in Navy Yard. That’s because it’s a “newer, transitioning corridor with a lot of new street signs,” Vigil says.
The pilot will take about a year and a half, and is a partnership with the California-based company Kiwibot, which was founded in 2017 as a robot delivery service.
Now that we know the robot won’t be doling out fines, that leads us to our next fear: What if it runs us over on the sidewalk or veers into oncoming traffic? Not to fret, says Vigil: See the woman in that video on X? That’s a DDOT employee. “There’s always an operator within the vicinity,” he says, adding that the robot is not replacing any of the department’s staff.
When the pilot program wraps up, DDOT will make a decision about whether to expand its robot arsenal. The department is considering sidewalk maintenance as a next step. Vigil says you can even see Kiwibot prep for this possibility in the video: It hits a bump, pauses and makes a note of its location.
If DDOT finds that the program was effective, it could deploy some more droids to DCs streets. Where exactly they would go is still up in the air.
“At this moment, we just wanna see how it’s gonna work,” Vigil says.
