The CEOs of delivery bot manufacturers Serve Robotics, Starship Technologies, and Coco Robotics tell Business Insider that people who encounter their automated couriers on sidewalks have not been nearly as abusive or violent toward the units as they had expected prior to launch.

Coco CEO Zach Rash said his initial fears of the bots being piled up like trashed Bird rental scooters were mitigated by the design of his company’s units being more “like R2-D2 instead of C-3PO,” and contrasting the neurotic, effete humanoid translator droid who doesn’t shut the hell up with the more useful trash-can shaped Dell tower on wheels who speaks only in tonal beeps and chirps. “C-3PO is a little annoying and gets stuck all the time. No one really knows what R2-D2 is supposed to do, but it is constantly fixing all the problems and being super useful and enjoyable,” said Rash.

So yeah, the robots are designed to look more infantile and sympathetic to prompt passerby to help them if a wheel gets snagged on uneven pavement. “If the robot’s stuck somewhere, it looks sad and people run over and help it,” said Rash. Serve CEO Ali Kashani said that his company last year added a routine to have their “Mingo” delivery bots ask other pedestrians to press the crosswalk button for it to help speed up delivery times. Los Angeles TikToker Will Gude documented an occurrence of this – and him telling “Mango” to “fuck you, press it yourself” and “you want me to do your job for you?” – only for other users to urge him to be nicer to the “baby” in the replies.

“I’ll get these messages telling me that I’m a punk for going after a robot, challenging me to fight, or that they’re going to kick my ass and they’re dead serious,” Gude told Business Insider.