The demand continues to expand, and several major technical problems of delivery robots need to be o

2024-01-16

Affected by special events, contactless delivery and dining have become a demand trend. As a result, the employment rate of delivery robots in the industry has increased, allowing people to see more new scenarios of intelligent delivery. With the layout of unmanned delivery in e-commerce, catering, and food delivery industries, the market size of the unmanned delivery industry is expanding, and it is expected that the market size of unmanned delivery may reach about 82.9 billion yuan by 2023.

It is said that in the past year, most of the growth in food consumption actually came from online sources. During this period, the growth rate of food categories in online sales channels exceeded that of the overall fast-moving consumer goods market. In this context, e-commerce has plunged into the snack industry, and numerous snack brands have suddenly entered the consumer's field of vision, further promoting the expansion of the food e-commerce industry. The market size of the catering industry is also steadily growing, maintaining double-digit growth. In 2020, the scale of China's catering and takeout markets has reached nearly 5.1 trillion yuan.

With the rapid development of e-commerce, catering, and takeout, human expenses for food and meal delivery have become important payment costs for various platforms. However, with the gradual weakening of labor dividends, driven by high labor costs, coupled with the development of artificial intelligence technology and the dual support of policy encouragement and market demand, delivery robots have become a new direction for e-commerce, takeout, and catering industries to solve the "last mile" delivery problem.

Especially since 2020, due to the impact of special events, contactless delivery and dining have become a demand trend this year, which has also shown people more intelligent new scenarios of human-machine cooperation. It is understood that since 2018, catering companies such as Hai Di Lao and food delivery platforms have launched smart restaurants and started using delivery robots in bulk. In June of this year, a fully automated restaurant under a certain enterprise officially opened, with all services from the kitchen to front desk reception to ground delivery being completed by robots.

The author understands that since the beginning of this year, Meituan has continued to promote the progress of unmanned vehicles and drones. Its new generation of unmanned delivery vehicles has iterated on the basis of the first generation of unmanned delivery vehicles, and has undergone three major tests: vehicle performance test, comprehensive durability test, and low-temperature cold zone environmental adaptability test. At the beginning of 2020, Meituan's unmanned delivery vehicle landed in Shunyi, Beijing to deliver fresh vegetables. A domestic e-commerce company has also conducted a pilot project for delivery robots.

Industry insiders say that environmental perception and motion control are very basic abilities of delivery robots, and their technological maturity also determines the degree of application and implementation of robot products. However, for complex scenarios such as express delivery and takeaway delivery, robots face challenges such as high passenger flow, narrow space, numerous obstacles, and high efficiency requirements. At present, the delivery robot still needs to solve four problems, including autonomous walking, flexible obstacle avoidance, load-bearing storage, and human-machine interaction.

For example, delivery robots need to be able to walk independently, find their destination on their own, and dock at delivery points on their own; Road delivery is complex and intricate, and delivery robots should be able to flexibly avoid pedestrians, vehicles, and other objects, and be unobstructed on rough road surfaces; In order to meet the delivery needs of different items, such as raw and cold seafood or cooked food, delivery robots are also equipped with customized refrigeration or heating devices; Robots should be able to deliver items to designated locations and identify users in multiple ways for pick-up.

Overall, delivery robots can bring about the evolution and application of new delivery technologies in e-commerce, catering, takeout and other industries, changes in logistics and service models, and changes in employment structures. However, there is still a long way to go for the deep and widespread application of delivery robots, as there are still some problems that need to be solved.

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