Self-Driving Delivery Coming To Your Home
The next big thing could be coming to your home, via self-driving delivery. Amazon has announced it will begin testing autonomous delivery robots in California starting in summer 2019, beginning in the city of Irvine in Orange County. The service will be aimed at Prime customers as a last mile delivery for packages coming from a distribution center. The delivery robots will be self-driving vehicles with the given nickname Scout.
Scout appears to be a small 6-wheel vehicle with autonomous capabilities. They have already been deployed as early as January 2019 in the state of Washington’s Snohomish County. Amazon is not the only company experimenting with this new service. Walmart has partnered with driverless vehicle company Waymo to trial its own self-driving delivery service. These services are still not widely available, so the locations that have them now will reveal whether it can be successful.
The Scout delivery robots were not designed to deliver large packages based on its size. They will most likely be used to deliver smaller parcels and packages that will fit inside its space. Besides being autonomous, Amazon also mentions that it is fully electric so they will have a smaller carbon footprint than cars and also won’t need any filling up at the gas station. You can read more about Scout at Amazon’s blog the this link.
Introducing Scout
Amazon bought a robotics company called Dispatch back in 2017. It was through this company that Amazon developed their delivery robots. At around the same time Dispatch was acquired, it had transferred its patents to Amazon Technologies, Inc. which is a subsidiary of Amazon that deals with research and development. Dispatch had actually developed an electric semi-autonomous vehicle prior to becoming part of Amazon. This would be the predecessor to Scout.
How It Works
The system, in theory, works like this:
- Local customers who order items from Amazon Prime will be eligible within the area where the delivery is authorized.
- The ordered package(s) will be delivered by either an Amazon or carrier partner with Scout.
- Customers will be notified in some way (text, e-mail, etc.) when Scout is arriving.
- When Scout arrives, customers just walk up to take their package.
Getting To Know Irvine
For those not familiar with Irvine, it is a rather big city in southern California with a population of over 200,000+ residents. That is a huge market that includes students (UCI is just one school located in Irvine), professionals (including many workers in high tech and finance) and families. The city has wide streets and sidewalks, including access for handicapped people which Scout can use to on ramp to a sidewalk when needed.
What makes Irvine ideal as a test location includes its demographics and well planned streets. The streets are not crowded in most locations. It is your typical suburban setting. Perhaps this is a type of environment where Scout can safely be tested. Amazon may have also chosen the city because it has business interests there. The city also has good infrastructure that can help Scout in its navigation. There are also many public safety rules and regulations to consider, so it appears that Irvine is a good starting point for that.
The Challenges
There will be critics who will not like the idea, either because it may replace humans and these self-driving vehicles are still not tried, tested and true. When a company can deploy many of these robots, they may eventually get rid of their human staff to cut costs and increase profits. These robots might also be a hazard to public safety especially in traffic prone neighborhoods and pedestrian sidewalks. Already, some commenters on articles about this have mentioned that there is potential for lawsuits if a pedestrian is injured if a delivery robot accidentally collides with them.
Perhaps most fears can be set aside. The purpose of these robots is to actually also make it easier for their human counterparts. In the most likely scenario, for a last mile delivery, the delivery robots will be accompanied by an actual human who works for Amazon or its partners. In this case Scout can be deployed to make deliveries to some houses, while the human worker can concentrate on another delivery. It will save a human delivery worker time since Scout can make deliveries to other customers.
The thought of Scout driving autonomously on the freeway is not how it is going to be deployed at the moment. There are no fully autonomous SAE Level 5 vehicles in production yet, so Scout cannot make the trip all the way from the distribution center to the customer. Instead, Scout will most likely be deployed from a truck with the package loaded from the distribution center. This will allow the delivery robots to use the side of the road and sidewalk to reach the customer’s home.
Final Thoughts
It seems that in the beginning, Scout will function more as a reliever to handle the slack. Eventually, as the amount of orders increases, there will be more work for Scout to do. Perhaps one of its purposes is to meet assist delivery employees and provide support in areas where there is great demand for home delivery.
This type of solution can work in many ways to benefit customers. The last mile delivery makes sense from a logistical perspective, and increase in efficiency that can allow for same day delivery for certain items. Prices may even become cheaper because self-driving vehicles can be electric, not requiring costs for fuel.
In terms of public safety, the self-driving vehicles have various sensors to help it along the way, and have been programmed to avoid accidents. There are protocols for autonomous vehicles in place that can be implemented to increase awareness of their surroundings. Amazon is using machine learning software to train their delivery robots to react to real world situations. They have an actual training park where they test these robots. To make the appearance of these delivery robots more acceptable, Amazon is designing them in a way to come off with a non-threatening vibe.
It remains to be seen just how well Scout will do in the real world. So far there things seem to be moving along in Washington. Initially Amazon had plans for delivery drones, but that requires a lot more effort to get off the ground. With the success of these delivery robots, it can then expand to larger markets across the US. Not all towns and cities will be like Irvine. Then it will be time to see how they handle more densely populated urban areas.
