A viral video showing a food delivery robot carefully maneuvering around an unhoused man asleep on a Miami sidewalk is inciting comments about modern-day dystopia.
TikTok creator @hackedliving shared the clip on Jan. 29, 2026, which has since accumulated nearly 3 million views and over 3,000 comments.
The autonomous sidewalk robot, the name "Akira" printed on its front, wheeled around an unhoused man asleep in the middle of the sidewalk while en route to complete a delivery placed through a food delivery app.
@hackedliving wrote, "how meta" in the post’s caption, tagging the City of Miami and Miami-based documentary film director Billy Corben.
The Akira robot in the clip is made by Serve Robotics, which spun off from Uber in 2021. Its autonomous sidewalk robots work in partnership with delivery platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash to deliver meals in a growing number of US cities. Serve began operating in Miami in February 2025.
Despite rising food and housing insecurity, thousands of food delivery robots currently operate in the US.
By the end of 2025, Serve Robotics had deployed over 2,000 robots in cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and Chicago.
Commenters on the viral clip quickly fixated on the unsettling contrast between autonomous convenience and visible homelessness playing out on the same street.
“We live in the lamest cyberpunk dystopia,” commented TikTok user @ultrafire1545.
X user @truthstreamnews set the scene with a description fit for a science fiction novel set in a finance dystopia.
"It’s 2026. You watch patiently as your delivery robot swerves to avoid the human body splayed out on the dirty, sunlight-dappled sidewalk to deliver the pizza you agreed to pay for in four installments with a $3 delivery fee + $4.99 service fee at 35.68% APR on Klarna." They added that the clip, “feels like it’d make a good origin story for where the phrase, ‘We’ve lost the plot’ came from.”
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