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In the midst of all kinds of urban operations, there is an increasingly urgent need: when online shopping products arrive in the community, from the “gate” to the “small gate”, how to be more hygienic, efficient and labor-saving? The global scientific research community and enterprises have already begun to explore autonomous delivery robots. Can this new thing solve this problem and bring greater convenience to urban life in the longer term? Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
The ideal “middle test” scene on a university campus
Research shows that in the next few years, online shopping will show the characteristics of multiple growth. It is estimated that by 2025, American consumers will spend more than 100 billion US dollars on household goods, and robot delivery has become a hot area of concern.
Not long ago, the robot REV-1, developed by the University of Michigan spin-off company Refraction AI, began delivering food to five local restaurants, and customers summoned them through a custom app. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
The REV-1 has a top speed of about 19 kilometers per hour, weighs 45 kilograms, and is driven by a motor of less than 500 watts, which means that it has low power and fully complies with the regulations of electric bicycles, so it is generally driven on bicycle paths. The robot’s “eyes” consist of satellite navigation and 12 optical cameras to automatically navigate and avoid obstacles in the city, some with a wide field of view, about 200 degrees, while others have a narrower field of view, about 90 degrees to 100 degrees. The information collected by the cameras is superimposed on each other, and the REV-1 thus obtains a full 360-degree viewing angle and realizes depth perception.
FedEx has launched a new SameDay Bot courier robot to try to achieve “last mile” short-distance delivery. The SameDay Bot is a battery-powered robot that can reach a top speed of 16 kilometers per hour and can autonomously shuttle between pedestrians and vehicles with the help of LIDAR sensors and conventional cameras. They are currently communicating with Pizza Hut, Walmart and others to assess the need for this robotic delivery service. On average, more than 60 percent of these retailers’ customers are within 5 kilometers of their store — ideal for servicing with the wheeled robot. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
A promotional video for the robot also shows that it has screens on the front and back to communicate with pedestrians. The front screen will show “hello” and the rear screen will show the direction you’re going and whether you’re about to stop.
Starship Technologies, which previously raised $40 million in financing, plans to cooperate with more than 100 universities in the United States to promote robotic delivery services on campus. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
Since launching the robot in 2018, the San Francisco-based startup has tested the robot for autonomous deliveries in more than 100 cities in 20 different countries. At present, the robot has walked through millions of streets, traveled nearly one million kilometers, and successfully delivered more than 100,000 orders.
Equipped with cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors and GPS, these six-wheeled robots have sophisticated computer vision and neural network systems built in to initiate travel, scan road conditions and identify obstacles on the road. They are all electric and can carry goods weighing up to 9kg to their destination, and people can use the app to open the box and get the item. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
It is worth mentioning that the delivery distance of the robot is 4-6 kilometers, and the top speed can reach 6.4 kilometers per hour – it seems to be a little slower than the motorcycle or bicycle of the takeaway brother. However, the advantage of an autonomous delivery robot is that it can deliver non-stop every morning and night.
Setting the experimental scene of the working robot delivered to the home on the university campus mainly stems from its ideal conditions in various aspects. First of all, students tend to order food and sundries needed for life online. As a younger generation group, they are also ideal initial customers who are more likely to accept new things and spread them widely. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
Secondly, the school has a large number of walking roads with clear boundaries, which are conducive to the driving of robots. It is also a good environment for improving self-driving technology, where robots can make multiple deliveries in a short period of time.
Again, the road conditions, building settings, and residents’ needs of the campus can be said to be a simplified version of the general community. Taking this as a starting point to carry out experiments and technical improvements, similar to the “pilot test” carried out by scientists, is of great significance to the future exploration of robots in the huge market of community distribution. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
After the initial expansion of the school, the company also intends to gradually push its business to enterprise parks, industrial parks, etc., for the delivery of some parts and small packages.
Four technical links need to be further improved
With the rapid development of e-commerce and takeaway, the labor cost of express delivery has become a part of the cost that cannot be ignored. How to reduce costs and increase efficiency, improve the quality and traceability of distribution services, and use artificial intelligence-driven distribution robots to become a new direction for solving the “last mile” of distribution. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
According to estimates, the global food delivery market has exceeded US$100 billion in recent years, while the parcel delivery market has reached US$300 billion.
In 2019, Amazon began testing the delivery robot Scout in many places. This is a small 6-wheeled self-driving robot that is similar in size to a large refrigerator. Powered by batteries, it travels at a speed similar to that of a human walking. Amazon previously tested the delivery robot in a neighborhood in suburban northern Seattle with human supervisors. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
Nuro, a self-driving technology company founded in 2016, seems to be taking a more “aggressive” pace. The technical requirements for the robot they introduced are that they can drive on surface roads in most cities. This puts forward higher requirements for the body structure and materials of unmanned delivery vehicles. In addition, it is also equipped with refrigeration or heating devices, which can meet the needs of different item distribution. Starting in 2019, pizza restaurants in the Houston area began using it to deliver products to customers.
For robot community distribution, a big difficulty is climbing stairs. Enterprises and research institutions that initially entered this field are often limited by this technical defect, and focus more on developing areas with more low-rise housing and lower housing density for delivery. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
There are also people in the industry who are optimistic that nothing is static. The development of technology can often drive important historical processes of human progress, including housing upgrades. Through human-machine collaboration, business efficiency is greatly improved. As long as the human-machine collaborative distribution meets the needs of the scene, the cost per unit is far lower than that of human-only distribution. These benefits will reversely promote the construction and improvement of community housing in the future, and create special conveying and lifting devices for automatic distribution robots.
Regardless of the future development, a number of technologies, including stair climbing, have become the bottleneck for the further application of robot community distribution. In recent years, they have also become the common target of enterprises and research institutions. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
Not long ago, a team of 9 undergraduates from ETH Zurich successfully developed a two-wheeled balancing robot with a parallel elastic jumping mechanism – Ascento, weighing 10.4 kg, with a maximum jump height of 0.4 meters and a speed of up to an hour. 8 kilometers. This is an inspection robot that can climb stairs. It stands on two large wheels, but three-piece legs connect them to the body. The robot is balanced and maneuvered by four motors, two of which are located in the wheels and the other two are mounted where the legs connect to the body. The combination of wheels and legs allows it to move quickly on flat ground and overcome obstacles by jumping. It is small in stature and exhibits a high degree of flexibility and maneuverability.
The analysis shows that the logistics robots adapted to the community distribution scene need to be further improved in the four technical aspects, and the breakthrough progress often needs to change from quantitative to qualitative. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
The first is to walk independently. Prosperous city streets, complex community environments, three-dimensional indoor routes on the first floor and one scene, and new artificial intelligence technical requirements for robots to navigate autonomously, learn autonomously, and build community maps adapted to their own walking.
The second is safety avoidance. The built-in navigation system limits the top speed for safety reasons. How to achieve a balance between safe obstacle avoidance and efficient distribution that satisfies all parties, including enterprises, consumers, and the surrounding environment, requires experimentation and a certain degree of model innovation. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
The third is to grasp the storage capacity. As a delivery tool, the number of packages that can be carried in each delivery needs to be considered. This not only takes into account the overall capacity, but also the upper limit of the volume of a single piece of cargo. On the other hand, the amount of storage is often inversely proportional to the flexibility and energy consumption of the robot. Therefore, special customization must be carried out for different distribution needs and scenarios. In a sense, the setting of the storage capacity of robot products is directly related to the promotion of its application in various landing scenarios.
The fourth is human-computer interaction. At present, many delivery robots have been equipped with facial recognition systems. When they are about to arrive at the destination, the system will send the pickup information to the user. After arriving at the destination, the user can choose to recognize the face, enter the verification code, click the mobile App link, etc. It can also automatically put the goods into the storage box, or electronically scan and sign for receipt. How to further ensure accurate matching, information security and ease of use in the human-computer interaction link is also the goal of future research. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
“Future service” urgently needs many parties to plan ahead
In fact, the significance of community delivery robots is not only the product innovation of one or two high-tech companies, but also contains the society’s thinking and definition of the “future service” of the community. Under the changing times and the aging situation in many countries around the world, the innovation in the field of unmanned logistics terminal distribution seems to have a more far-reaching significance.
In addition to technology, there are other barriers that need to be crossed for the popularization of community distribution robots. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
For example, in the internal system, establishing an unmanned warehouse and improving the synergy between it and the terminal distribution, and improving the “interface” are crucial to the entire logistics chain. In terms of external systems, many countries still lack macro-level policies and regulations and clear and detailed industrial management systems for end services such as urban logistics drones, unmanned vehicles, and smart express cabinets, and environmental protection is relatively lagging behind.
Some scientists pointed out that the landing of cutting-edge technologies “deviates from the landing”. This situation has precedents in other fields and should be taken as a warning. While new technologies are changing lives, they are often accompanied by chaos and disruption. In the boom of unmanned delivery vehicles equipped with artificial intelligence technology, how to fully prepare for social ethics and legal norms, it is urgent to find the optimal solution in cold thinking. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
For example, if the data collected by a community delivery robot directly connected to people is uploaded to the learning library of other robots, it will undoubtedly greatly promote the progress of machine autonomous learning. However, based on information security considerations, is this sharing necessary? Setting up a “fence”?
Ethics in the field of technology is a conventional social and moral boundary. From a deep level, it is also the exploration of human nature by technology. Artificial intelligence technology is more closely integrated with humans, especially. It is indispensable to maintain awe of ethics. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
For example, what about the data privacy responsibilities, rights, and interests acquired from this unmanned delivery service? In the process of delivery, if a traffic accident occurs, how should the responsibilities and compensation of technology providers, commodity providers, and community parties be defined for the loss of people and goods? How to divide the interests of multiple parties during the multiple links such as data collection and learning model establishment in the early stage of technology research and development? These issues intertwined with technology and social management should be given equal attention to technology in the development process of this industry. In the future, they are also worthy of long-term consideration and planning in the fields of urban management and community planning. Expert Manufacturer of form grinding
