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On Wednesday afternoon, Carolyn Marvin, 78, stepped in front of an Uber Eats delivery robot on the 1200 block of Filbert Street in Center City Philadelphia. It was not her first time. It was the first time police showed up.

Officers arrived around 1:16 PM, responding to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot.” After Marvin ignored multiple orders to step aside, they issued her a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct — what appears to be the first arrest in the United States for physically obstructing an autonomous delivery robot.

Marvin is a professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she taught courses on freedom of expression. She has been blocking Uber Eats robots — built by Avride and deployed in Philadelphia since March 2026 — for months. Past encounters had been filmed and circulated on Facebook. Wednesday’s was the first to escalate to police involvement.

The Protest

Marvin is not targeting the robots for their technology. She’s targeting the labor displacement they represent.

“Corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line,” is how she describes her objection. She is careful, she says, to block only the robot’s path — never the sidewalk to human pedestrians.

Her approach is to stand in front of the robot until it stops, then talk to curious passersby about the economics of autonomous delivery. “It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have.”

Public opinion on the street is split, she says. Some support her; others argue she’s being unfair to customers who paid for delivery. Marvin’s response to the latter: if you’re concerned about money, the impact on delivery workers should concern you more.

The Legal Position

Marvin plans to contest the disorderly conduct charge on First Amendment grounds, arguing she was lawfully protesting. The charge is a summary offense under Pennsylvania law — not a misdemeanor or felony — but it carries a small fine and appears on criminal records.

Uber declined to comment on the arrest.

Whether standing in a robot’s path constitutes protected protest or illegal obstruction is untested legal ground. Avride’s robots navigate sidewalks under Pennsylvania Act 106 of 2020, the state’s permanent personal delivery device statute, which requires them to yield right-of-way to pedestrians. The legal framework for human obstruction of these devices was not written with deliberate protest in mind.

Context

Uber Eats began deploying Avride robots on Philadelphia sidewalks in March 2026, making it one of the first major U.S. cities with active commercial sidewalk delivery robotics at scale. The robots operate autonomously and are remotely monitored.

Marvin’s case is the first to test whether sustained physical interference with an autonomous delivery device constitutes protected speech, disorderly conduct, or something else. As robot delivery expands into more cities, the answer will matter to both operators and regulators.

Marvin said the arrest has not changed her plans. She intends to keep blocking Uber Eats robots.