Robots don't smoke, says Alibaba, and that's why they deliver parcels so fast Alibaba has revealed one reason it's decided to deploy 1000 rolling delivery robots across China: they don't stop work to smoke. "Last-mile delivery has always been the knotty problem of e-commerce," states a post from the Chinese web giant. "It's costly, time-consuming and largely unmapped. "This final leg in a journey that …
> Delivery people can get lost trying to find a flat in a tower block
And how would this chest freezer-sized contraption on wheels do a better job? Especially since GPS won't help it once in a building.
It has to fit in the elevator (assuming there is one), manage the elevator's interface to reach the right level (arms?), then navigate randomly built corridors (hopefully large enough) to find a specific apartment door, and last but not least manage to make sure the person taking the parcel is indeed whoever was supposed to receive it. And then manage to leave the building.
All this sounds like a PR stunt. Can't their delivery people smoke while driving/walking?
Yup. Those delivery bots are going to get to feel the pain in a gentle manner before being thrown into the arena that is the streets, with their criminals and short-tempered people who need to take it out on something that won't respond.
Honestly, a parcel-carrying robot is just a "Rob Me !" sign on wheels.
I'd like to see them try it on mine. That place was a robot's nightmare. Steps everywhere, never even, pathways intermittently blocked with vehicles, very steep pathways, snow and ice at some points, and ground made of whatever the builders had access to at the time including uneven bricks. They also hadn't completed their wheel chair accessibility requirements either, which would make things even harder. If they want to use these in real deliveries, they're going to need to deal with a lot of that stuff. I have a feeling it's a lot like Amazon's drones, which got tested with some hype and a lot of protests but never really got used.
<pedant>That works out to one accident in a million deliveries, or one every fifty days</pedant> if you accept that rate, which I don't. There's no way they got enough information to estimate that number to that precision, and likely they have little evidence to estimate it at all. I'm sure it hasn't made a million deliveries yet, so the only way they're not lying is if it has so far had zero accidents. If it is, they don't know how likely it is to have accidents. They also state this number as if it has meaning without characterizing any of the necessary details, such as the environment necessary to get that level. I guarantee that it will have a lot more accidents in the winter in northern China than in the summer, in the sandy areas of western China than in paved ones not near sources of abrasives, and in lightly trafficked areas than in dense cities with plenty of available collisions. Yet they don't mention anything of the kind at all.
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> mapping information
That's all fine and dandy in the streets, but the problem starts as soon as this huge vehicle tries to enter a building (potentially defended by some steps), find where they've hidden the elevator, manage to fit in and operate it, and generally manage to find the apartment door it was looking for. All this without any map and no GPS.
> Delivery people can get lost trying to find a flat in a tower block or navigate a large housing estate
So instead the robots won't give a shit and just drop the parcel where-ever? I think UPS has a patent on that already.
Edit: also, if that thing came trundling down the sidewalk, it'd be spare parts inside of an hour, at most. "Look! Stepper motors!"
Imagine every house having a small helipad where delivery drones can perch on before depositing the item you ordered perhaps mere minutes ago safely into a receptacle and flying off again. Not only would it be a dream for any home shopper, it'd also finally solve the problem of having to curse one's way down two dozen flights of stairs every single time there's a delivery at one's flat which of course does not have an elevator, and no, the delivery guy will not walk up all those stairs.
Unless you're doing both kinds of delivery and you get to select which, you've just moved the complaint to those who live at the bottom who would not like to walk up that many stairs to collect their package from the roof.
There are other problems, too. How about places where the roof has snow on it in the winter? How does a drone deal with that? Do the residents have to climb up and remove the snow frequently? How does a multi-occupant building work? Do the packages all go to the same place and people just work out who gets what? If the building does make separate receptacles for each resident, how does the drone identify which one to use? How would the system be paid for and standardized? How would it be added to older buildings?
"Bzzt! What kept you?"
"Beep! I was half way up the emergency spiral ramp when I met JQ429Zx337B coming down the other way. My algorithm required me to give way to the downward mover so I started to reverse back down. Meep! Then A9VMH47QQ7 came up behind me with a wide load. I was not a downmover but an upmover in reverse so it refused to back down. Freep!"
"Zzt! Bleedle!" You should have negotiated that beforehand. You have failed. Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"
KZZZZERRRT!
Seems an odd assertion to make. Humans mostly use Google maps or some equivalent to find their way around, and many people today would be completely lost if you asked them to find their way without some sort of electronic device to give them directions. What exactly will robots use that is not only better, but also somehow unable to be used by humans? If it's just better mapping software or some magic new navigation device, you could just put it in the hands of your regular delivery drivers much more easily than designing a whole robot around it.
> they're so much cheaper than hoomans
I don't see why. Look at the picture, this is a huge contraption, with an engine, batteries, cameras and a computer. Buying them will cost way more than hiring some minimum wage slaves. The savings, if any, will only come over a period, as robots don't need to be payed. But, and this is a big "but" (no pun intended!), this only works if they are reliable and don't require too many costly repairs. Technicians also cost more than delivery drivers, not to mention spare parts and asset immobilization.
Long story short, I doubt they will ever be cheaper to use than minimum wage workers. But they do create some tasty PR buzz...
I see a lot of cynical comments about what people can do and drones can't, but one thing drones can't do is lie about trying to deliver a package and failing like, for example, the UPS guy who claimed to have been by my house multiple times yet without ringing the bell or leaving a delivery notice. While drones might be robbed, they are also unlikely to steal a package that looks especially appealing, nor are they as likely to decide that it's fun to run packages repeatedly through the PPR (package processing railgun, a device whose existence I infer from the battered state of many of my packages).
> one thing drones can't do is lie about trying to deliver a package
True, the drones can't, but then again you won't talk to them directly. The (almost) human responsible for the deliveries can though, and will: It's always better for their job security than to admit they've messed up, the drone did break down, the parcel was stolen, your house was too far, not enough other deliveries in your area, or whatever else might have happened.
A simple "there was nobody home" solves everything and allows them to keep looking like dedicated, hard-working, dependable model employees...
"predict the next five to ten seconds of movement by nearby people"
Oddly, I was just thinking about this myself today while driving. I noticed a woman stepping out from between parked cars. It was absolutely clear to me she was about to get into one of the parked cars, I could tell by her body language and subtle movements of her eyes etc. And it crossed my mind that a self driving car would be very unlikely to have a level of surety in that situation and would almost certainly have stopped or taken evasive action, ie erred on the side of caution, causing all the traffic to slow or stop too. I very much don't believe ANY self-driving vehicle can predict more than a second or two of peoples movements, let alone 5-10 seconds. A lot can happen in 5 seconds where pedestrians are concerned, not least of which is seeing someone they know, seeing something in a shop window or suddenly deciding to turn 90 degrees to cross the road.
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