Urban Robot

Robots are entering from factories and laboratories into the urban space, to improve its smart governance and service, alleviate the aging pressure, and promote sustainable and resilient urban development. The application of urban robots has become an inevitable trend in the future development of cities. Like other disruptive technologies, its application will reshape urban life and urban space, but the existing research lacks a discussion on its relationship with urban space. Our research defines the concept of “urban robots” and constructs a feature analysis framework to describe the workflow of urban robots, covering its physical, social, and digital attributes, through a systematic literature review of 78 WoS core collection literatures. Based on the framework, this paper further summarizes the characteristics of urban robots, six of their application areas as well as spatial problems they face such as diverse obstacles, lack of structural rules, and a high likelihood of cross interference. Finally, in order to solve the spatial problems faced by urban robots and place some limits on their behaviors, this paper, based on design cases, proposes exploratory strategies for urban space response and coordination, so as to promote thinking about future urban space design.