The Traffic Light of Kalamaja

Nine Days

九天

The control room of the company Siil was on the third floor of a former factory building in Tallinn, and at night it was the quietest place in the city. Forty screens hung on the wall, each showing a piece of street filmed from fifty centimetres up: kerbs, puddles, the ankles of late pedestrians. Through these streets rolled the company's delivery robots, white boxes on six wheels, no bigger than a fridge lying on its side, with a small orange flag at the back so that drivers could see them.

Siil公司的调度中心位于塔林一座旧工厂的三楼。在夜里，这里是全城最安静的地方。四十块屏幕挂在墙上，每块屏幕上都是一段街道。画面是从五十厘米的高度拍摄的：路缘石、水洼、深夜行人的脚踝。公司的送货机器人穿梭在这些街道上。它们是装有六个轮子的白色箱子，大小如同一台倒下的冰箱。机器人尾部插着一面橙色小旗，好让司机看清它们。

Siil means hedgehog in Estonian, and the robots behaved like one: they were slow, friendly, and stopped as soon as something was in their way. Mostly they found a way round it by themselves. If not, they called the control room after a minute, and then a human took over. On the night shift that meant twelve people, and one of them was Kaisa Tamm.

在爱沙尼亚语中，Siil的意思是刺猬。机器人的表现也恰如其名：它们行动缓慢，性情温和，一遇到阻碍就会停下来。大多数时候，它们能自己找到绕过去的路线。如果找不到，它们会在一分钟后呼叫调度中心，随后由人工接手。夜班一共有十二个人，凯萨·塔姆就是其中之一。