Alibaba Group Xiaomanlv robots hit e-commerce delivery milestone

Alibaba Group’s Xiaomanlv robots have delivered more than a million parcels in China within one year of their launch.

Two hundred of them have carried parcels to more than 200,000 consumers in 52 cities across 22 Chinese provinces.

Each one can carry about 50 packages at a time and cover 100 kilometres on a single charge, delivering about 500 boxes per day.

Over the next three years, Alibaba expects to expand the fleet from 200 to 10,000 robots, which equates to handling an average of one million packages a day.

Wang Gang, Head of the Autonomous Driving Lab at Alibaba’s global research arm, DAMO Academy, says: “Xiaomanlv achieving over one million delivery orders is just the beginning. It’s laid the groundwork for the future development and application of our autonomous driving technology.”

Last year, Alibaba started piloting Xiaomanlv robots across China’s university campuses and communities

“One important breakthrough is our ability to use advanced algorithms to achieve a low cost, mass deployment of our self-driving vehicles across communities and campuses,” says Wang.

He claims the overall costs of producing and operating Xiaomanlv is a third of the industry average.

This comes from lower hardware costs, as the robots operate based on trained algorithms instead of the high-definition sensors that are used by most self-driving cars. Alibaba uses a proprietary multi-sensor fusion solution and AutoDrive, its machine learning platform, to power Xiaomanlv.

It has trained Xiaomanlv’s algorithm on its cloud computing driven testing platform, which simulates over 10,000 possible scenarios, such as extreme weather situations and poor visibility at night.

The robot typically encounters more than 40 million obstacles each day but it can navigate its way more than 99.9% of the time without human intervention, according to DAMO Academy.

Wang says that the same technical framework is now being used to design self-driving delivery trucks, in collaboration with Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Network.

“These larger robots will be able to deliver goods at a faster speed and for longer distances. They are likely to appear on public roads within three years,” he adds.

RobotsStaff WriterXiaomanlv robots, Alibaba Group, Robots, Delivery robots, China, Online delivery, DAMO Academy, Autonomous retail, E-commerceComment