The Chinese giant of e-commerce – JD.com online store, in late November opened its first station of robotic couriers in Changsha, the capital of the Hunan province in the central part of China. Automated vehicles will facilitate the delivery of parcels directly to the customer.
The robots designed by the company spent over 17 thousand hours moving around the Chinese cities during the testing phase. The results of the tests were positive and therefore, the company decided to use the robots commercially, informs the Xinhua agency.
The newly opened station has a surface area of 600 sqm and allows the storage of 20 courier robots. The vehicles deliver parcels within a radius of up to 5 km. In addition, robots have been designed to accommodate 22 orders in specially prepared lockers. Customers can receive their packages in two ways. Thanks to the technology used, the vehicle will be able to scan and recognize the face of the person collecting the goods. The second option, however, assumes the traditional entering of the previously received code on the panel.
According to Liu Xiangdong, director of the JD.com automated centre, the company’s vehicles are able to handle up to 2 thousand packages a day. In addition, all the robots located on the Changsha station have autopilot and can move at a speed of 15 to 20 km/h.
Photo: Screen from YouTube/New China TV