Robotic Food Delivery Pilot – Referral to Staff

Statement Watch

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Haro Yunus, and I am the Director of Policy at the Business Council of British Columbia and a Vancouver resident. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. The Data Council of BC represents the province's largest and leading employers across a range of sectors, including companies working at the frontier of new technologies like surf robotics. Our perspective today is that Vancouver should be a place where innovation can thrive and where a competitive market can develop. I am here to support the motion in front of you, and I will make the case in three parts. First, this is genuine innovation, and it's worth getting in Vancouver. Low-speed autonomous delivery devices are already operating successfully in cities across the United States. They are electric, they are quiet, and they help local businesses reach their customers. Industry research projects Canada's last-mile delivery market will grow from roughly $4 billion to over $7 billion over the next decade, with most of that growth concentrated in major cities like Vancouver. Innovation that helps supply this growing demand is exactly the kind of activity Vancouver should be looking to host. Second, the framework to handle this responsibly is already in place. The province passed Bill 23 in 2023 to enable exactly these kind of activities with municipalities setting local rules and the province establishing the regulations that allow pilots to actually operate. Three years on, though, those provincial regulations are still pending. So the motion in front of you takes the local step and asks the province to take the next one. And that is the right approach, and the pilot itself reflects it. It will test the legitimate questions about safety, accessibility, and shared public space under real conditions, and will give Council the evidence it needs for the decisions that come after that. And third, this is also a question about BC and Vancouver's investment attractiveness and investment climate. Companies, investors, and founders deciding where to put their next dollar are looking for jurisdictions that move at the speed of business. And that record is built one decision at a time. When new technology arrives in BC, the regulatory response is not always kept up. For example, BC was the last province in Canada to allow ride hailing, and the cost of that delay was real. So the motion in front of you today is a chance for Vancouver to set a different example. So we respectfully encourage council to approve the motion. It is the right decision on the merits. It is the right signal for Vancouver's investment climate. And it is the next step framework already in place was designed to receive. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Please go ahead.

Excellent. Good morning, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Vignesh Ram, Vice President of Public Policy at CERB Robotics, and I'm here in support of the motion to enable a delivery robotics pilot in Vancouver. CERB is an autonomous sidewalk delivery company. Our robots are fully electric, operate at low speeds, and are designed to move alongside pedestrians while delivering food, groceries, and everyday items from local merchants to nearby customers. Since 2020, we've completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries in over 20 cities. But this pilot is especially meaningful to us because CERV has deep Canadian roots. I'm Canadian myself, and our founder and CEO, Ali Kashani, is a Vancouverite and a UBC graduate. Over the years, members of our data science, product, and hardware teams have been based in Vancouver, even testing early versions of our bots here. For us, this is not just another market. It's an opportunity to bring a Canadian-led innovation home. And we've been working to earn that welcome before any robot rolls out for delivery. We began talking with folks from Invest Vancouver as well as the provincial government over three years ago. And locally, we've met with neighborhood groups, joined local business associations, and made a point of showing up to community events, including Web Summit next week, because we believe that trust has to be built in person. The question before council is not whether delivery is growing. It is, and we see it every day. The question is whether Vancouver wants to shape that growth in a way that supports local business, reduces pressure on streets, and improves livability. Local merchants are under real pressure. Restaurants, grocers, and small retailers are competing not just with each other, but with global e-commerce platforms that can make it easier to ship across the ocean than across town. Vancouver needs solutions that help keep commerce local. That's core to our business model. About 90% of the businesses we work with are small, independent shops, places like my personal favorites, Brunch at Medina or Late Night Cuisine at Fritz. Delivery robots can help. They offer an affordable, efficient way for local businesses to reach nearby customers, especially for short trips where using a car is often the least efficient option. They can help support local jobs. In every market, we hire for high-quality entry-level tech roles, from mapping and operations to calibrating sensors, roles that are especially well-suited for people with military experience or those coming out of high school robotics programs. They can also help with congestion and safety. Each delivery completed by a small electric robot is one that doesn't require circling for parking, idling at the curb, or adding another short trip to busy streets. And because our robots are small and low-speed, they carry a tiny fraction of the kinetic energy of the vehicle. we also recognize sidewalks must work for everyone we've worked with disability advocates to inform our design and operations share data with cities about missing curb cuts and infrastructure challenges and we continue to improve through feedback to ensure accessibility and pedestrian safety remain central my colleague michelle will speak to this in more detail Trust is burned, so we need a careful step-by-step approach with provincial frameworks, local oversight, clear rules, and public feedback. This motion alone does not authorize a pilot. It signals to the province that Vancouver is open to exploring on, and that signal matters because without provincial confirmation that delivery robots are permitted under Bill 23, no pilot can legally proceed regardless of what the city decides. the pilot of design itself roots conditions inference requirements and operational parameters would be developed afterward in close collaboration with city staff engineering services and the community nothing is locked in today beyond vancouver's willingness to take a first step this city is long in one that cares livability i apologize for interrupting you but you are over time um so we'll have to leave it there thank you um the next speaker is sharif verani do we have sharif on the line we'll come back uh how about speaker four michelle lee hi good afternoon can everyone hear me yes we can please go ahead perfect good afternoon mayor and counselors thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is michelle lee and i lead accessibility here at surf robotics And I think it's worth mentioning that I also am a part of the disability community and I use a wheelchair myself. I am here in support of the motion to enable delivery robots in Vancouver. And I'd like to address some of the accessibility concerns that I'm sure many of you may have heard or have yourself. And when delivery robots were deployed in Toronto, it did not go well for the disability community. And there were obstructions, inadequate responses, and the operator did not engage meaningfully with advocates in the community before launching. And I want to be very clear, that is not how CERV Robotics operates. We operate very differently. And a lot of it is because of the team and the work that we're doing. ACROSS ALL THE OTHER MARKETS THAT WE'RE IN. OUR PROPOSAL BUILDS ACCESSIBILITY CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE OPERATIONAL DESIGN FROM THE BEGINNING. NOT AS AN AFTER THOUGHT AND NOT AS A NICE TO HAVE OR A CHECK BOX. THE ROUTES THAT OUR ROBOTS TRAVEL IS REVIEWED AGAINST SIDEWALK WIDTH AND CURBRAND CONDITIONS BEFORE WE EVEN ACTIVATE. AND WE WILL NOT OPERATE ON ROUTES THAT MAINTAIN CONTINUOUS, THAT CANNOT MAINTAIN CONTINUOUS PASSAGE FOR SOMEONE using a wheelchair, a walker, or a white cane. And we are building contingencies. When a robot does stop unexpectedly, and sometimes they do, we will have a 10-minute field agent response target to physically remove or relocate the robot. And our field agents are specifically trained on accessibility situations. And before this pilot begins... we plan to engage with local disability organizations and advocates, not only just to present a finished plan, but to listen and really engage with concerns and adjust our operations accordingly well before we launch. And throughout this whole pilot, if it happens, and hopefully it will, Any incident involving pedestrian obstruction will be logged, investigated, and reported to the city monthly with corrective actions documented. And this is a pilot that we expect... This is a pilot. We expect to learn things, right? So if something isn't working, especially for the disability community, we want to know about it, we want to learn, and we also want to address it immediately. This commitment is written into our proposal, and we are prepared to be held accountable to it by the city and by the staff. So accessibility is not like a compliance checkbox for robots. For our robotics company that operates in the public sidewalk, in the public right of way, it's really the most fundamental test of whether this technology deserves to be here and out in the wild. We believe our robots can

Statement Watch

you today. My name is Julie Sturgeon. I'm a resident of Vancouver, and I'm speaking in favor of this motion. I'm also currently a software engineer working for ServRobotics. And specifically, I want to talk to you about my perspective as someone who lives and works in Vancouver. So I've been a resident of Vancouver for 10 years, and I currently live in the West End. I've been an employee of CERV for almost half that time, for four and a half years. And the entire time that I've known that these robots existed, I've wanted to see them on the streets. In 2022, we did a pilot with Pizza Hut down in the West End at Robson and Denman. And I had the honor of being on site for that pilot. And what struck me the most being there was the fact that the robots look so natural in that environment. It looked like the robots had been there for years. A delivery robot is just about as polite of a pedestrian as you could expect to see in the West End. And it just really, really struck me. And it also reminds me of the Skytrain. I'm so proud to have the Skytrain in our city. It's an amazing technological marvel. But it's something that we don't think about anymore, unless you're a tourist or you're a child. chances are you don't think about how cool and amazing this technology is. For my entire time that I've worked at CERF, I've worked from Vancouver, along with many other coworkers, and some have a longer tenure than mine. In fact, when CERV began operating, we had a physical office here, and 20% of our workforce was based here. Vancouver has world-class technical talent, and I can speak for both myself and my coworkers that when you work in tech, it is the greatest privilege to be able to work on something that benefits your community, and it's even more rare and special when that technology actually gets deployed into your community. If we had an actual presence here, we would have an additional operations staff. These are real boots on the ground individuals with a diverse array of backgrounds. And we rely on people who are local for these roles to make sure that we can be successful and that these robots positively impact our communities. When I think about robots on the streets personally, I think about my neighbors in the West End. I have a lot of neighbors who are elderly. I have a lot of neighbors who have physical disabilities who need help getting the necessities of everyday life. I also think about myself when I'm too sick or I'm too tired to go out and get things. When I order something from three blocks away and inevitably it comes in a vehicle, that just doesn't make sense to me. I moved to Vancouver because it's a very livable, forward-thinking, technologically-focused city, and I really want to see these robots here. And I urge you to vote yes today so I can see my robots on my streets. Thank you very much.

Statement Watch

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Yariel Diaz. I'm the Director of Government Affairs at CERV Robotics. I'm here today in support of Councillor Klassen's motion. I want to speak to two things specifically. What this pilot means for Vancouver's economy and a public benefit we think gets overlooked in these conversations. City infrastructure data. This isn't a Silicon Valley company parachuting in. This technology has roots in the province, and we want to bring it home. Vancouver is already recognized as one of North America's leading tech hubs. A responsibly managed delivery robot program is an opportunity to signal that Vancouver doesn't just attract technology companies, it helps grow them. As part of our proposed data sharing commitments, CERB will provide the city with anonymized reporting on non-accessible curb cuts and infrastructure gaps that our robots are identifying during operations. Our robots navigate sidewalks at ground level in real time. We would share that data with city staff and it could directly inform capital plans for sidewalk improvements that would benefit every resident. Thank you for your time.

Statement Watch

Thank you. Good morning, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Sharif Virani. I'm one of the co-founders and head of partnerships with EcomNorth, an organization driving the growth of Canadian e-commerce. I'm here because I believe that automated delivery done responsibly can help Canadian cities support local businesses, reduce unnecessary vehicle trips, and test new technology in a practical, accountable way. My connection to this issue is personal. My father came to Canada from Uganda as a refugee in the 70s, and a small Ottawa department store gave him the job that helped him build a life here. That experience shaped how I think about small business. It's not just an abstract concept, but a lifeline for families and communities here in Canada. Before the pandemic, I worked around the launch of food delivery platforms in Ottawa. What became clear to me was that smaller businesses, restaurants, grocers, florists, hardware shops, and butchers need more affordable ways to reach customers. there's a real desire to buy canadian goods and shop local but it has to be convenient and economical for people to act on it this is where delivery robots can play a role we've seen thousands of delivery robots globally over the last decade they're not a silver bullet they're not meant to replace careers vehicles or a delivery trip they're just another method and tool another sustainable method and tool to move goods around the city especially in walkable neighborhoods for short local trips i understand why cities want to proceed carefully and they should the goal is not to flood sidewalks with robots but to with technology that we can pilot to responsibly collect evidence and learn from real-world conditions and let municipalities set the clear rules. At the end of the day, it's still a human's world and robots just work in it. Vancouver has an opportunity to shape this technology before it simply arrives. A pilot lets the city test it carefully on its own terms, in tandem and partnership with CERV Robotics, and in service of local businesses, safer streets, and more sustainable delivery. I urge the committee to vote yes on this today.