Carolyn Marvin has a simple habit when she spots a food delivery robot rolling down a Philadelphia sidewalk. She steps in front of it and stays there for a while. On Oct. 14 that small act of protest ended with the 78-year-old in handcuffs.

Marvin is a retired communications professor from the University of Pennsylvania. Since self-driving delivery robots began carrying lunch orders around parts of the city in March, she has made a point of slowing them down for 10 or 15 minutes whenever it fits her schedule.

She says the worst outcome is a cold rice bowl for an office worker. To her the robots raise bigger concerns about delivery workers losing income, sidewalks getting crowded and cameras recording people as they walk by.

From flu shot to squad car

On the day of her arrest she was heading home after a flu shot with takeout in one hand and a jar of sauce in the other. She stopped in front of a robot in a busy area and a crowd gathered. Some people cheered her on and others did not.

Police said they responded to a report of mischief involving a delivery robot and found a woman who would not let it pass. They said she ignored repeated orders to move. Officers handcuffed her and placed her in a patrol car before issuing a citation for disorderly conduct.

Marvin laughed as she recalled it and said she thought she had more rights than a machine. A friend joked that she had been charged with getting in the way of capitalism.

Robots count as pedestrians

Pennsylvania passed a law in 2020 that treats these devices as pedestrians rather than vehicles. That means drivers must yield to them in crosswalks. The robots in turn are supposed to yield to people walking or biking.

Marvin has protested for civil rights and against wars over the decades and sees this as part of the same tradition. She says the country handed its streets to cars long ago and should not give its sidewalks away to machines.