One of the leading parcel delivery companies operating in the UK today, DPD, recently announced that it planned to start rolling out the use of its autonomous robots to perform deliveries. This is a trial move which will see two neighbourhoods in the town of Milton Keynes selected for the project. According to DPD, the trial is part of the firm’s wider experimentation with AI-powered robotics. The courier firm has been working with Cartken, a last mile delivery specialist that also develops self-driving car technology.
In a press release, DPD said that it would be using branded robots in the field, ones that were part of an autonomous delivery system developed by Cartken. The idea is that the practical challenges of utilising robots to make real-world deliveries will be better understood as the project is monitored. According to the company’s statement, all of the robots involved will initially operate from DPD’s depot in Knowlhill. This will mean that the robotic carts will need to be able to get from there to the residential areas of Shenley Church End and Shenley Lodge, both a little under a mile from the depot.
Off-Road
Importantly, at this stage of the programme, the robots will not need to navigate the town’s road network. This is because Milton Keynes has a traffic-free network known as Redway. The unitary authority’s Redway network is used by pedestrians, cyclists, scooters and wheelchair users, however, so it is expected that the project will involve plenty of interactions between people and the autonomous robots involved in the experiment. Due to the AI technology that the robotic carts possess, machine learning will be involved so that the robots can master the routes they will need to move through on their own. The idea is that the depot will serve as the robots’ ‘home’ but they will need to rely on their own AI algorithms to find their way to the delivery addresses without further human intervention. That’s to say that the experiment is expected to be fully autonomously.
DPD’s UK CEO, Elaine Kerr, said that this is a really important trial for the British wing of the firm. “We would like to understand the role that robots could play in locations throughout the UK,” she said. Pointing out that delivery robots are a sustainable solution that doesn’t require fossil fuel consumption, she went on to add that DPD truly wants to find out whether such technology could help them to take vans off the road in the near future. Perhaps pre-empting the results of the trial Kerr said that the technology is proven and, thus far, the public’s response to the wider electric vehicle fleet DPD had been amazing.
Confidence
“I have confidence that our customers will embrace these smart robotic devices,” Kerr stated. Noting some concerns about the role of delivery drivers, she added that she thought it was not realistic to say that DPD would be completely replacing its human drivers anytime soon. “We wouldn’t want to do that anyway,” she said, stating that the service they already offer is ‘fantastic’. Nevertheless, the CEO emphasised the fact that DPD has always tried to take the lead on the way to innovate in logistics. “Investing in our network is the next logical step for us, both in terms of becoming the country’s most sustainable delivery company and the adoption of evolving delivery solutions.”
According to Cartken, its level 4 autonomy and navigation technology are more than up to the job. The firm says that it is viewed as one of the safest last mile delivery solution providers in the world. Currently, Cartken is among the market leaders in autonomous robotics for the courier sector. For example, its systems are currently being deployed by Mitsubishi, a Japanese automotive tech giant in its own right. Furthermore, Cartken has an existing commercial arrangement with one of the leading food delivery firms in the United States, GrubHub. So confident is Cartken in its UK partnership with DPD that a video showing an autonomous delivery robot being put through its paces in Milton Keynes – complete with DPD’s logo and livery – has already been released.
Notifications
Local recipients of parcels being sent by DPD to the two districts in Milton Keynes will be notified in advance that a robot will be making their delivery. At this point, the householder will be expected to advise the system that they are currently at home and in a position to take receipt of their delivery. Only then will the robotic cart be dispatched to convey their consignment to them on the final stage of its journey from the supplier. Indeed, DPD says that the service will allow customers to track the progress of their package more easily than is currently possible with human delivery operatives. The robots being used emit GPS data so that they can be tracked wherever they might be. The delivery system will, therefore, be able to display the progress of the robot on a map displayed on the customer’s computer or smartphone. Furthermore, an additional notification will be sent to the customer when the robot has reached their property and the goods inside the cart can be taken out.
Even the security measures needed to allow for this level of autonomy have been thought of. Cartken’s carts have a secure compartment inside them through which customers can access their delivery. The customer will be sent a code which will allow them to get inside. Once the compartment has been emptied and the door shut, the autonomous robotic cart will then be instructed to return to the depot so that it can make further deliveries. Should the trial prove to be successful, then DPD has already said that it would like to extend the autonomous final mile robotic solution to the rest of Milton Keynes. If so, this could mean that it will begin removing the firm’s delivery vans from the town’s road network.
Anjali Jindal Naik, Cartken’s Co-Founder and COO, said that the Milton Keynes trial constituted an exciting collaboration for parcel deliveries in the UK market. “We are thrilled to be a part of DPD’s sustainability plan,” she said, According to the COO, Carten’s robots are designed to provide sustainable solutions which can integrate seamlessly into the existing infrastructure of settlements like Milton Keynes. This trial is one of a number of green initiatives that DPD has announced in recent times. The courier company has already unveiled plans to ensure it is running over 3,000 electric vehicles on UK roads by the end of 2022. It has also said it will increase this figure to 5,000 electric vehicles by the following year.
Wider Autonomy
Elsewhere, the Co-Op Group has said it will also be trialling autonomous delivery robotics with a completely different system from the one developed by Cartken. In partnership with Bedford Borough Council, the Co-Op has said that three of its stores in the town will move to autonomous deliveries. According to the retailer, this means that up to 45,000 residents across some 20,000 residences in the area will be able to receive their grocery orders from a fleet of autonomous robots made by Starship Technologies. Co-Op stores and Starship – an Estonian firm with headquarters in California – already run some autonomous robot delivery services, so this is an expansion of their current programme. At the moment some Co-Op customers in Milton Keynes, Northampton and parts of Cambridgeshire can have their orders fulfilled by electrically powered, six-wheeled delivery robots.
According to the Co-Op, the stores that will take part in the Bedford autonomous trial are located in the Goldington, Queens Drive and Kempston areas of the market town. For its part, Starship says that its robots are powered by renewable electricity that has no carbon footprint. Unlike the DPD-Cartken model, Starship deals with the commercial side of the operation as well as the logistical one. Grocery orders from Co-Op stores are made with Starship’s own food delivery app. Then, the ordered items are picked as freshly as possible in the nearest Co-Op shop. According to data from the most recent app usage, groceries can be expected to arrive within one hour or less from an order being submitted.
In findings presented in a recently published industry report on autonomous robotics, the size of the delivery robot market in North America alone is expected to rise to around USD $20 million (£16 million) by the end of 2022. Many predict that it will likely double from this figure within the next five years. However, this will ultimately depend on the security and safety aspects of the various autonomous services currently being rolled out. Only when consumers are confident with such systems will they start to become the norm instead of the novelty that they currently are. Time will tell as to how this will impact on traditional last mile delivery services, of course. However, many investors in autonomous tech are betting that robots are going to be playing an ever more substantial role in the years to come.