Two newly filed lawsuits in Cook County claim that sidewalk delivery robots operated by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics have been scanning the faces, hands, and bodies of customers and passersby without their consent. The complaints allege the companies' robots capture biometric identifiers as they roll through Chicago neighborhoods, raising fresh legal questions just as the city's delivery robot pilot program faces mounting political pushback.
The two lawsuits name Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics as defendants and allege the robots' onboard cameras and sensors scan faces, hands, and bodies of both customers and other people encountered on public sidewalks, according to ABC7 Chicago. Serve Robotics uses cameras and sensors to navigate Chicago sidewalks, the outlet reports, and the company says it does not use the data it collects to identify individuals. Coco Robotics, for its part, says it has not collected biometric data in Chicago at all.
Carl Hansen, head of government relations at Coco Robotics, said the lawsuit misunderstands the company's technology and predicted it will go away. Coco separately said that privacy and compliance with privacy laws are a top priority, calling the claims meritless, and added that it has never used lidar in Chicago. Serve Robotics said it will defend against the complaint, maintaining that its systems are not designed to identify individuals or create biometric profiles.
Coco has said that all data it collects complies with Illinois law, and that it shares anonymous navigational data to help improve street safety, including real-time sidewalk hazard information fed to BlindSquare, a navigation app used by people who are blind or have low vision. The company also says it shares no video from the beginning or end of a trip, per the same ABC7 Chicago report.
What Illinois' Biometric Privacy Law Actually Requires
Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act requires companies to provide notice and obtain written consent before collecting facial geometry or other biometric identifiers. Serve Robotics says its cameras and sensors are used to navigate Chicago sidewalks and that it does not use collected data to identify individuals. That distinction matters under BIPA's strict consent rules, according to Thomson Reuters.
The financial stakes of that legal fight have shifted in the companies' favor over the past two years. Illinois amended BIPA in August 2024 so that repeated collections of the same biometric identifier from one person using the same method count as a single violation rather than accumulating with every scan, with statutory damages set at $1,000 for negligent violations and $5,000 for intentional or reckless ones. In April 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled in Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. that the amendment applies retroactively to pending lawsuits, a decision confirmed by ArentFox Schiff, meaning Coco and Serve Robotics face damages capped per person rather than per camera frame.
Illinois' BIPA has previously produced massive payouts from major tech companies accused of harvesting facial geometry without consent, including Meta's $650 million settlement in 2021 and Google's $100 million settlement in 2022, as Hoodline has previously reported.
A Program Already Under Fire at City Hall
The lawsuits land amid an already tense political climate surrounding Chicago's sidewalk robot pilot, which the City Council established in 2022 and which is set to expire in May 2027 unless extended, according to CBS Chicago. In February, 1st Ward Alderman Daniel La Spata blocked delivery robots from expanding deeper into Logan Square and Wicker Park after a ward survey found nearly 84% of local respondents strongly opposed sharing sidewalks with the devices, a restriction Hoodline covered in a earlier story on the ward crackdown.
An online petition from the group NoSidewalkBots.org had gathered more than 3,700 signatures by March, demanding the city end or pause the pilot program over pedestrian safety, sidewalk accessibility, and surveillance concerns. That same month, separate robots operated by Serve Robotics and Coco Robotics crashed into CTA glass bus shelters in West Town and Old Town within days of each other, shattering glass panels onto public sidewalks, CBS Chicago reported.
Not every ward has turned against the robots, however. In June, 6th Ward Alderman William Hall authorized Serve Robotics to expand into Chicago's South Side, marking the program's first expansion into neighborhoods including Englewood and Chatham, according to Axios Chicago
, a sharp contrast to the restrictions imposed by North Side aldermen.
Serve Robotics' Rapid Chicago Buildout
Serve Robotics only entered the Chicago market in September 2025, launching through a partnership with Uber Eats across 14 neighborhoods and more than 100 local restaurants, per GlobeNewswire. The company operates autonomous delivery robots in Chicago.
Both companies have disputed the claims, and Serve Robotics says it will defend against the complaint. For now, the cases add a new legal front to a sidewalk robot experiment that was already drawing scrutiny from aldermen, activists, and pedestrians across the city.
