Orchestrating Urban Robotics: From Fragmented Pilots to Integrated Systems

The deployment of robotic systems in urban environments is increasingly recognized as a component of future urban transformation. However, the transition from experimental applications to sustained, city-wide deployment remains constrained by institutional fragmentation, heterogeneous governance structures, and limited coordination among stakeholders. This whitepaper examines urban robotics as a systemic socio-technical phenomenon, focusing on the institutional, organizational, and environmental conditions required for integration across interconnected urban domains. The interaction between technological capabilities, organizational structures, regulatory conditions, and human actors is examined. Particular attention is given to the distribution and interdependence of responsibilities related to governance, operational control, accountability, infrastructure, data, and ethics. Building on this, the whitepaper identifies key conditions that could potentially support transitioning from isolated experimentation to coordinated urban deployment. Furthermore, it develops a stakeholder-oriented perspective on roles, responsibilities, and value creation. Six illustrative use cases demonstrate how these principles can be translated into practice across diverse urban domains, including waste management, urban landscape maintenance, assistive shopping, first-response support, healthcare assistance and wayfinding, and infrastructure inspection. In addition, urban sandboxes, digital twins, Artificial Intelligence, and Extended Reality are considered as enabling tools for experimentation, stakeholder participation, and anticipatory assessment. The resulting framework provides a basis for coordinated pathways toward the integration of robotics as a scalable component of future urban infrastructure and public services.