Containing COVID-19 in China: AI and the robotic restructuring of future cities

Introduction

A defining feature of the effective management of COVID-19 is the need for stringent non-pharmaceutical strategies including physical distancing, lockdowns, and quarantining to block transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus between humans (WHO, 2020). However, strategies are also required to facilitate the movement of people and material to maintain essential circulatory flows and sustain human life. In this commentary, we examine the intersection between COVID-19 management strategies and the technological affordances of robotics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the need for human contact in selected areas of urban interaction.

The COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding at a time of ongoing and significant advances in urban robotic applications. Drawing on examples from China, we examine how responses to COVID-19 have broadened the landscape of robotic infrastructure and what might be learned about the prospects for future urban robotic restructuring. For example, are these experiments in urban robotics a viable rather than speculative framework for public health and urban management? Are these new capacities simply temporary expedients or part of an emerging model of technically augmented biosocial management? If the latter, what does it mean for the extension of surveillance and social control in urban environments that are now seen as hostile to humans? In addressing these issues, we draw on emerging theory which points to growing concerns and public scrutiny over new forms of automated social control (While et al., 2020).

Robotics and pandemic urbanism

There were major advances in real-world applications of urban robotics around the world prior to the coronavirus outbreak, evidenced by the rapid development of drones, driverless vehicles, and service robots (Macrorie et al., 2019; While et al., 2020). Governments and private firms were the primary driving force, with the former more interested in automated policing and traffic management and the later focused on transforming freight and human mobility. A robotic infrastructure is particularly well placed to respond to the containment and physical distancing logics of virus management. Indeed, one of the most significant advances in robotic applications has been in ‘hostile’ environments where it is difficult for humans to function safely. COVID-19 turned the outdoor public realm into a potentially challenging environment for humans. Potential intersections between robotics and urban COVID-19 management include:

Reducing human-to-human contact: urban robotics is in part a method for substituting humans on the grounds of efficiency, reliability, and cost savings as well as extended capability in logistics, healthcare, and social services. Robots can perform and replace key ‘human’ functions in urban pandemic control, either autonomously or controlled at a distance, to minimize the risk of disease transmission.

Managing, monitoring, and controlling movement: a central task of territorialized COVID-19 management has been to control movement and enforce lockdowns through human policing and mobile phone-based tracking. Robotics and AI—including facial recognition software—offer new forms of territorial control in the sky, on the ground, and at checkpoints.

Prior to COVID-19, robotic applications in the public realm were limited by concerns for public safety, albeit with limited discussion of surveillance and social control (While et al., 2020). Those concerns remain but there is perhaps now a more permissive approach to urban robotic experiments, reflecting new calculations of human risk and extending the scope and scale of experimental applications.

Robotics and COVID-19 in China

By 2019, China was recognized for its exceptional capacity in robotics, autonomous systems, and AI, with particular strengths in facial recognition technologies (Ding, 2018). The Chinese model of AI development is underpinned by the implementation of ‘safe city initiatives’ (Artigas, 2017), a result of the growing use of facial recognition technologies to monitor and manage citizens in the urban public realm through a combination of CCTV and advanced AI. Building on these systems, the state, cities, and corporate partners readily repurposed existing AI and robotic applications to meet the demand of COVID-19 containment. China’s response is ‘perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history’, drawing on a range of technological, digital, and social control strategies (WHO, 2020: 16). Our interest is in four sets of robotic and AI-enabled pandemic management applications.

Conclusion

The field of urban studies has made important contributions to the study of SARS and other infectious diseases by exploring the conceptual linkages between global cities and epidemiology (Ali and Keil, 2006). This commentary adds another dimension to that work by highlighting linkages between urban pandemic management and the emerging field of urban robotics. Urban robotic restructuring has the potential to transform the infrastructures of everyday social life through technologies of human augmentation and replacement. Prior to COVID-19, these technologies were developing rapidly but the pandemic has accelerated real-world experimentation, and these demonstrations have extended the possibility for their wider application. Urban robotics has had particular appeal during the COVID-19 pandemic because it assists with service delivery, policing, and healthcare while minimizing human-to-human contact.

So far these technologies have been framed as largely socially beneficial, with profiling and intervention based primarily on a logic of pandemic control. It might also be argued that much of the robotic response to COVID-19 has been confined to initiatives that are well-promoted but relatively limited in functional capacity. However, what the Chinese experience points to is the potential for an extended reach of AI and automation into everyday lives facilitated by autonomous systems, not least in relation to overlapping forms of biosecurity control and spatial management. As we have argued elsewhere, the application of automated urban management is moving much more quickly than public and political debate (While et al., 2020). There are undoubtedly economic, social, and health benefits of urban robotics, but these beneficial uses should not override the need for meaningful public scrutiny of their application in different urban contexts. Critical urban research can help ensure that the accelerated technological response to pandemic control does not reinforce or extend the proprietorial logic of the smart city.