Delivery robots can already deliver goods to your door, but are they perfect?

Recently, a delivery robot that can deliver goods to homes has appeared on the streets of the UK, breaking the previous state that delivery robots can only deliver in parks. Supermarket customers in some areas of Manchester have begun to receive goods delivered to their homes by robots. The British Co-op Store has teamed up with Trafford City Council and American robotics company Starship Technologies to provide online delivery services to 24,000 residents in the sales area. This is a mobile delivery robot with a speed of only 6km/h, which is very close to the walking speed of a person. Currently, you can enjoy the service after shopping at the Co-op stores on Washway Road and Coppice Avenue. At present, some companies are already using delivery robots to deliver packages to customers' doorsteps, while other companies are testing their use in other environments such as hospitals and airports.

Are delivery robots a gimmick or a practical technological product? In what environment do these robots work best? Delivery robots are autonomous robots that have become increasingly popular recently. You only need to set a destination for them, and they can navigate autonomously according to the preset map, calculate the walking route, and avoid obstacles on their own. In theory, they have autonomous driving functions that are not only convenient to use, but can also help reduce traffic congestion and improve delivery efficiency. But in actual use, can delivery robots really achieve such results?

The current delivery robots have reached a bottleneck

Current delivery robots usually use navigation technologies such as map navigation and autonomous navigation, use binocular cameras and lidar as perception systems, and have not been trained with a large amount of walking data. They drive according to program judgment and planning. If robots are used in open and well-debugged workshops, they can greatly improve transportation efficiency. However, since robots can only move according to their own programs and cannot communicate with people or objects around them, once they are in an environment with people or social vehicles, they will make everything worse when they encounter congestion.

When the robot encounters a collision or is about to collide while walking, the current delivery robot's solution is not particularly reasonable. Because it is difficult to avoid blind spots in the radar installation location, the robot can only rely on higher-frequency radar to prevent accidents. In an emergency, the emergency response made by the robot without foresight is likely to cause the loaded goods to spill or collide.

Delivery robots also have relatively high requirements for road conditions. The current mechanical structure cannot allow traditional wheeled delivery robots to climb steep slopes or stairs, nor can they cope well with uneven roads. If bipedal or quadrupedal robots are used, although they can enable robots to climb stairs, their stability cannot be guaranteed and their driving speed will not be as fast as it is now. There is still a long way to go in the future in terms of stability, speed, and crossing ability.

Keep moving forward on the road to exploring the best solution

At present, some electric car companies such as Tesla have invested a lot of energy in the research and development of autonomous driving. In the future, the autonomous driving capabilities of delivery robots should be greatly improved, which can effectively break through the current bottleneck. Tesla's current solution is to collect a large amount of driving data of car owners and environmental data recorded by cameras, and through AI training, let the vehicle's autonomous driving have the driving thinking and ability to predict danger like an experienced driver. Tesla's newly released FDS autonomous driving is already more sophisticated than many drivers.

In the future, with favorable factors such as improved autonomous driving capabilities and optimized mechanical structures, delivery robots will play a greater role and help us improve transportation efficiency and reduce transportation costs.