UK Set to Legalize Pavement Robots After Five Years of Regulatory Grey Zone

UK government ministers are expected to approve a legal change permitting delivery robots on English pavements, formalizing operations that Starship Technologies and others have conducted since 2021 without explicit statutory permission. The move follows the Automated Vehicles Act (May 2024), which governs road-based self-driving vehicles. Pavement robots occupy a separate regulatory tier but face the same underlying question: how to set safety and liability standards as autonomous devices integrate into shared public infrastructure.