The revolutionary Chinese robotics accelerating last-mile delivery.
There are numerous challenges of last-mile delivery logistics, mainly the speedy delivery of low size goods in congested urban or far-spaced rural locations and the expectation for it to be free. As such, businesses around the world are racing to develop new technologies to increase parcel volume, delivery speed and customer satisfaction.
Well Alibaba has done just that.
They have introduced a fleet of autonomous mobile delivery robots, called ‘Xiaomanlv,’ or ‘small donkey,’ in Mandarin, for Chinese university campuses and urban communities that can travel 100km on a single charge and deliver up to 500 packages a day.
Picking up parcels at a local courier drop-off point, the robots make their way to buildings along footpaths and bicycle lanes. Residents can even expect to see them riding alongside them in elevators as they move around buildings (and I thought making conversation with people in elevators was hard enough!).
The company has said:
“A fleet of robots (are) a fast, reliable and relatively cheap way to fulfill the burgeoning demand for online shopping across China, the world’s largest consumption market.”
Indeed, package deliveries reached 830 billion in mainland China in 2020, which is nine times the volume of 2013, according to China’s Post Office.
This is an especially important development considering that China is home to one of the fastest growing ageing populations in the world. This means there are less able-bodied people to work as couriers, putting a strain on the amount of deliveries that can be carried out.
In addition, the coronavirus pandemic produced a massive push from offline to online consumption and the desire for safe, contact-free delivery. This is one of the main reasons that drone deliveries have been trialled by some cutting-edge retailers such as JD.com.
Interestingly, large drones are being seen as ‘the solution to delivery and inefficient transportation modalities in remote areas,’ according to Liu Dong of Chinese logistics giant SF Holdings.
Their drones are able to carry 5.25 metric tonnes across 1,200km at a speed of 180km/h or 111 mph, flying over difficult terrain such as mountains, canyons, wetlands and deserts.
Nevertheless, we can expect innovative solutions in both areas to continue to be developed and further lifestyle-enhancing technologies to be introduced, such as medical bots that dispose of waste in hospitals and firefighting drones that extinguish high-rise fires before rescue teams even arrive on the scene.
