Alibaba Cloud debuts last mile delivery robot
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s Alibaba Cloud division has unveiled an autonomous logistics robot for last mile deliveries.
Developed by the Alibaba DAMO Academy, this can carry 50 packages at one time and cover 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) on a single charge.
Alibaba Cloud estimates that the robot should be able to deliver as many as 500 packages a day to one designated community or campus as demand for speedy last-mile delivery increases in China.
“Supported with reinforced learning technologies, the intelligent robot can schedule its route even in a crowded environment. With proprietary, high-definition positioning technology, it can operate even where there’s weak or no GPS signal,” a press release claims.
“Leveraging a self-developed heterogeneous computing platform, 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation (PCSS) technology and deep learning, the robot can also identify obstacles and predict the intended movement of passengers and vehicles a few seconds ahead of time to enhance safety.”
Consumers can use either the Cainiao or Taobao mobile apps to select a preferred delivery timeslot. Upon arrival, they retrieve their packages by entering a passcode sent via the app.
“We are expecting a rapid spike of delivery demands brought by the thriving New Retail and local services businesses in an increasingly digitalised world,” says Jeff Zhang, President at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“To meet the strong delivery demand for our internal business growth and for the larger society, we have been investing in smart logistics, including logistics robots, for years. Our latest mobile delivery robot will support Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics platform, to serve communities, campuses and business parks in China.”
“Moving ahead, we aim to support the delivery needs of our local services businesses and leverage our technologies for other types of service robots, such as service robots in the airport and tourism guide robots in scenic spots,” he concludes.
