People don't like security guard robots that look like security guard robots. There's an easy answer to that: make it cute. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'd be willing to bet people are much less likely to vandalize a robot that looks like Wall-E than one that looks like ED-209, even if they do exactly the same thing.

> This is going to be a problem everywhere as robots are rolled out - people don’t like them.

Yeah this is a big problem, especially for unaccompanied autonomous robots.

I’m very bullish on this stuff in technological progress terms, but I’d still dislike seeing these things on the street unaccompanied. At best you’re being remotely recorded/streamed/observed/stalked by some anonymous remote operator (and the internet has taught us a lot about what human behaviour is like when there is total anonymity).

At worst it’s packed with explosives.

I’m not sure how we deal with this issue. I guess there will be a big difference between how accompanied vs unaccompanied robots will be viewed.

A bit like a large dog wondering about on its own would be treated with a lot more caution than one accompanied by its owner!