Is Robot Labor Labor? Delivery Robots and the Politics of Work in Public Space

Researchers EunJeong Cheon and Do Yeon Shin have published a provocative new study titled 'Is Robot Labor Labor? Delivery Robots and the Politics of Work in Public Space' on arXiv. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in two smart-city districts in Seoul, the paper challenges the common narrative that sidewalk delivery robots operate autonomously. Instead, the authors argue that each successful robot delivery represents a 'distributed sociotechnical achievement'—reliant on extensive human labor, regulatory coordination, and social accommodations from passersby. The study introduces the critical concept that robots reconfigure labor rather than replace it, making robotic performance highly visible while obscuring the essential human and institutional support systems that enable it.

The research identifies 'robot privilege'—the observed phenomenon where humans routinely yield right-of-way to robots in public spaces—and notes a perceptual divide between casual observers who find robots 'cute' and everyday coexisters who view them as 'admirable.' Unlike industrial robots confined to factories, these public-facing machines operate in shared civic space, engaging directly with policy narratives and the public. The authors contribute both a conceptual reframing of robot labor as a collective assemblage and empirical insights from South Korea's aggressive smart-city automation push. They conclude with a call for the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) to engage more deeply with labor studies and spatial politics to better theorize the real-world impact of robots in our cities.