The Uber Eats robot<\/a> chose a pacifist approach, steering around its would-be adversary without incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Orifice wasn\u2019t created to instigate a territorial dispute between robots. She was made to promote peace between robots and humans, which is no small feat in the City of Brotherly Love. Here, delivery bots aren\u2019t brothers. They\u2019re the \u201cother,\u201d even when they\u2019re bringing you a cheesesteak with Whiz.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since Uber Eats delivery bots made their Philadelphia debut in March, the city has not exactly rolled out the red carpet. Within weeks of the robots\u2019 launch, Philadelphians displayed \u201cthe whole spectrum\u201d of reactions, according to Dr. Philip Dames<\/a>, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Temple University in Philly.\u00a0 Most people barely gave them a second glance, but on the extreme end, one robot was kicked over at around midnight, and one was sat on and graffitied with the words, \u201cDESTROY ME PLZ.\u201d<\/p>\n Orifice was designed to be a more warmhearted, interactive answer to the joyless functionality of delivery bots. But why are some people compelled to harass delivery bots in the first place? And can a pink potato<\/a> with a tongue change that?<\/p>\n \u201cCute, friendly, and human\u201d<\/p>\n The Ministry commissioned Polidoro, a Philadelphia-area fine artist and fabricator known as 10 Ton Fetus<\/a> for her surreal and psychological sculptures, to create a mobile sculpture.<\/p>\n After talking it over with her colleagues, she decided to build her own robot, Orifice, as a foil to the Uber Eats bots.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving run into them, and being horrified by it, I was excited at the prospect of making their archnemesis, a hero of sorts!\u201d she says. \u201cSomething perfectly opposite of what they [delivery robots] are.\u201d<\/p>\n Polidoro knew that to properly offset the slick, appliance-like look of the Uber Eats bots, she would need to give Orifice plenty of human flourishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe had to be cute, friendly, and human,\u201d Polidoro says. \u201cI carefully considered approachability and anchoring points for human connection in her design.\u201d<\/p>\n Orifice stands two feet tall and is shaped like a potato. She has pink, weatherproof rubber skin, and large blue eyes that blink regularly and can also be remotely operated. Her dangling tongue, tuft of Troll doll-esque blond hair, and pink ribbon juxtaposed with an occasional top hat give her a quirky, sometimes unsettling charm.\u00a0<\/p>\n And yes, her name is literal: She has what Polidoro calls a \u201cfunctional orifice\u201d on her rear end, a common feature of the artist\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t \n\t\t\t\tAwebot Leads the Way to the Ministry of Awe | Positively Philly\t\t\t<\/p>\n \tArtist Madison Polidoro\u2019s mobile sculpture, Orifice the Awebot, was even featured on local news. Video: Awebot Leads the Way to the Ministry of Awe | Positively Philly, PHL17 Philadelphia<\/a><\/p>\n For a city that has officially embraced the grotesque hockey mascot Gritty, which The Guardian has described as \u201can acid trip of a mascot<\/a>,\u201d Orifice almost seems like a love letter on wheels. And so far, the reaction to Orifice has been largely positive, Polidoro says.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people smile, laugh and record her, asking questions and wanting to know more,\u201d she says. \u201cOccasionally, people are surprised or find her a bit unsettling. But even those people seem curious and lighthearted.\u201d<\/p>\n Too cute to kick?<\/p>\n Unlike the delivery bots, which Polidoro describes as \u201csomething from a science fiction<\/a> novel,\u201d Orifice seems to hit a sweet spot in terms of adorableness.<\/p>\n \u201cShe seems to tap into the psychology of cuteness, like a dog<\/a> or a child, something understood to be precious and innocent,\u201d she says. (Fortunately, Orifice seems to stop short of provoking \u201ccute aggression,\u201d the urge to squeeze something unbearably adorable<\/a>.)<\/p>\n And there truly is a psychology of cuteness. Researchers have found that robots designed with the \u201cbaby schema\u201d (big eyes, round faces, and other infant-like features) are perceived as cuter and more trustworthy. Research by Kate Darling<\/a>, a robot ethicist who studied human\/robot interaction at the MIT Media Lab for about 15 years, has also found that names and backstories make people hesitate to hurt robots, Dames notes. But a pretty face can only go so far.<\/p>\n \u201cA face alone doesn\u2019t protect a robot,\u201d Dames says. \u201cThe Uber Eats rovers have blinking, winking eyes and still got hazed, and a face engineered to look friendly can read as manipulative.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s not the only way making a robot more \u201chumanlike\u201d can backfire, according to Dr. Donald Hantula<\/a>, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University. He likens it to Star Wars\u2019 beloved beep-bot R2-D2<\/a> versus the frequently beleaguered, all-too-humanoid C-3PO<\/a>. The more a robot resembles us, he suggests, the more likely it is to face the bullying we usually reserve for one another.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is that the more human something becomes, the more we tend to treat it as human-like,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we humans have a really terrible history of how we treat fellow members of our species.\u201d<\/p>\n So, will Orifice manage to strike the perfect balance between human and machine, serving as an ambassador of goodwill between tech-weary humans and the machines rolling into their neighborhoods?<\/p>\n \u201cProbably not,\u201d Hantula says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Behind our beef with bots\u00a0<\/p>\n So, what is driving hostility toward robots on the street? Whatever it is, Philadelphia seems to have a lot of it. In 2015, hitchBOT, a robot built for a social experiment on the kindness of strangers<\/a>, was found decapitated at the top of Old City\u2019s Elfreth\u2019s Alley.<\/a> Named after local blacksmith and property owner Jeremiah Elfreth, the alley is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited residential streets in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n The alley\u2019s museum has since hosted events about hitchBOT\u2019s demise that are part commemoration, part celebration, with an annual festival possibly in the works.\u00a0<\/p>\n But hostility toward robots is far from just a Philly thing, or even a delivery bot thing, Dames notes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d expect friction wherever robots enter public space without local say,\u201d he told Popular Science.<\/p>\n That invasion of space without public buy-in can be especially challenging on crowded public sidewalks, which robots must share, as Dames puts it, \u201cwith kids, dogs, wheelchair users, and tourists, none of whom opted in.\u201d On those packed sidewalks, the robots are, in Hantula\u2019s words, \u201cessentially beer coolers on wheels\u201d and consistently \u201cget in people\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tRelated ‘Ask Us Anything’ Stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n The humble delivery bot stands in for Big Tech<\/p>\n Beyond these logistical issues, Dames says, robots on the street are often among the only physical manifestations of the otherwise inaccessible corporate entities they represent.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe robot is the only part of a company a person can physically reach,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t confront a cloud algorithm or a board of directors, but you can confront the rover on your block.\u201d<\/p>\n Facing down delivery bots is precisely what Dr. Carolyn Marvin,<\/a> a retired University of Pennsylvania communications professor, has been doing. On Oct. 14, Marvin was arrested and cited for disorderly conduct<\/a> after stationing herself in front of an Uber Eats robot near Reading Terminal Market. It wasn\u2019t the first time she\u2019d blocked the bots on her daily walks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marvin told KYW Newsradio that she\u2019s protesting \u201cthe ruthless way that rich corporations are casting aside human workers.\u201d She says she has no intention of stopping.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fear of the machine\u00a0<\/p>\n Confronting robots may also offer an outlet for modern anxieties about the rapid, seemingly ungovernable ascent of artificial intelligence<\/a>, which some experts have warned could wipe out humanity within a decade<\/a>. Some passersby have even been known to yell \u201cclanker<\/a>,\u201d an insult popularized by Star Wars that has since become an anti-AI slur, at Uber Eats bots.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe physical embodiment gives you a better target in a sense,\u201d Hantula says. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to kick against AI, but it\u2019s like, okay, I see that thing and I can.\u201d<\/p>\n And some of it might be simply for show, Hantula notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of this I think is also driven by getting social media likes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Yet some cultures do seem able to coexist peacefully with delivery bots and other robots. In Korea and Japan, for example, robots are viewed as reliable, time-saving helpers<\/a>, not professional rivals or harbingers of doom.<\/p>\n Orifice probably won\u2019t be able to single-handedly repair the troubled history of robot\/human relations in America, but perhaps her presence will provide, as her name suggests, an opening.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes it can be, and needs to be, as simple as a moment of raw discovery and joy, savoring the little things that make us human,\u201d Polidoro says. \u201cI\u2019d like Orifice to bring a piece of that [joy and discovery] to everyone she encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n In Ask Us Anything<\/a>, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you\u2019ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you\u2019ve always wanted to know? Ask us<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 2026 Popular Science Home of the Future Awards<\/p>\n 39 products that will improve your everyday life.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n Jennifer Byrne is a New Jersey-based freelance writer and journalist who has been published in\u00a0The Cut, The New York Times, Atlas Obscura, The Guardian, The Boston Globe\u00a0and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a showdown worthy of a classic Western, except the things rolling down the street weren\u2019t tumbleweeds.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[245,991,139,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-321223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-evergreen","tag-features","tag-news","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pink](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Awebot-02-1.jpg\")
Orifice the Awebot is here to promote peace between robots and humans. Image: Ministry of Awe <\/p>\n![\"Awebot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Serve](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Serve-Robotics-Delivery-Robot.jpg\")
Sometimes making a robot look more human can backfire. Image: Getty Images \/ Walter Cicchetti<\/p>\n![\"2026](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/home-of-the-future-header.jpg\")
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