Era of driverless delivery on the way to reality

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A man picks up a parcel from a Cainiao autonomous delivery vehicle at a community in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in August (ZHU YINWEI / FOR CHINA DAILY)

On the campus of Harbin Engineering University in Heilongjiang province a courier wound its way steadily among teachers and students.

Arriving at a dormitory building, the courier called 25 students, who had all ordered the food at the same time, to pick up their takeout orders.

Students were astounded to find the courier was a yellow unmanned delivery vehicle that stopped right in front of them. With no driver, steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal, the artificial intelligence-enabled vehicle said: “Enjoy your meal”, and then left for the next station.

The courier was among the first batch of intelligent vehicles the university introduced to help with deliveries. Over the past few weeks a large group of universities in Beijing, Shanghai as well as provinces such as Shandong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu have started using automated delivery vehicles. Behind this is the broad momentum of large commercialisation of unmanned deliveries in China.

“To avoid the risk of crowd gathering, we have opened 94 canteen stalls to offer takeaway services for more than 1,600 kinds of food for students,” said Li Bo, deputy head of rear services at Harbin Engineering University. “Our unmanned delivery vehicles can take 2,000 to 3,000 orders on average a day.”

Li said an unmanned delivery vehicle can help with 80 orders for each outing and can make 100 delivery calls in five seconds, the delivery efficiency of which is 10 times higher than that of human delivery.

In Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, automated deliveries are no longer limited to vehicles as drones of SF Express transport boxes of bayberries from a mountaintop to a delivery station far below.

For local farmers, the delivery of bayberries has always been a problem because the fruits bruise easily in ground transport. It used to take more than two hours to deliver the fruit, but now using drones it takes only eight minutes, SF Express said.

“Over 30 companies are deploying autonomous delivery solutions in China,” said Bill Russo, founder of the consultancy Automobility in Shanghai. “A more dynamic system built upon autonomous and robotics technologies will allow economies and businesses to adapt to the rapidly transforming world and the new challenges it brings, such as more flexible and less centralised manufacturing.”

For some time now, Chinese technology companies have been stepping up unmanned delivery services, which are expected to generate huge commercial value in businesses that deliver express parcels, takeout food, fresh produce and retail pharmaceuticals.

A report by the investment firm Estar Capital forecast that sales revenue of the country’s terminal distribution market will exceed 300 billion yuan (£34 billion) this year. Terminal distribution refers to logistics services that interact with end-users.

In China a sound unmanned distribution business model has been formed with technologies being able to support different needs. The overall industry is expected to eventually enjoy large-scale commercial applications, the report said.

For these unmanned vehicles, companies also rely on safety control centers to monitor self-driving vehicles and road conditions in real time and give timely assistance and instructions to vehicles in need.

Previously published on Chinadaily.com.cn