A 78-year-old retired University of Pennsylvania professor was arrested in Center City Philadelphia this week after standing in the path of an Uber Eats delivery robot and refusing police orders to move. Carolyn Marvin, professor emerita at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, was charged with disorderly conduct following the Wednesday afternoon incident near Reading Terminal Market.
Police responded around 1:16 p.m. on October 14 to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street. Officers found Marvin blocking an Avride robot operating for Uber Eats. She ignored multiple commands to step aside so the machine could complete its delivery. She received a criminal violation notice.
Marvin has been protesting the robots for months.
“I know they’re taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward,”
She told 6abc Action News. She frames the actions as First Amendment-protected demonstration on a public sidewalk and plans to contest the charge on those grounds. She says she is careful not to block human pedestrians and intends to continue.
This was the first time police intervened. Marvin had confronted robots previously, including a September incident on Broad Street that circulated on social media. A witness who saw an earlier encounter initially thought the robot had struck her; Marvin replied that she had to stop them because “they’re taking over the world.”
Avride robots made their debut in Center City in March 2026. These robot delivery devices move as fast as 5 mph, have the carrying capacity of 55 pounds, can be used for around 12 hours per battery charge, and are active from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., within the restricted radius. Customers get access to the storage compartment through an application and do not have to pay tips. Uber refused to provide any comments regarding the arrest.
Marvin, the author of When Old Technologies Were New, taught freedom of expression at Penn. Her activism is described by Marvin herself as “citizenship”: “I am exercising the rights of my citizenship.” Society responds differently to Marvin while some support her labor complaints, others criticize her late paid deliveries.
This particular case is another example of how society should strike a balance between automation efficiency and convenience versus workers’ lives and the right to protest in common public space.
