Industrial Automation Magazine India

Sidewalk Last Mile Delivery Robots - A Billion-Dollar-Market by 2030

Published on : Wednesday 25-12-2019

Sidewalk Last Mile Delivery Robots: A Billion-Dollar-Market by 2030?  Boston, December 23, 2019 – Last mile delivery is the most expensive part of the delivery chain, often representing more than 50% of the overall cost. This is mainly because it is the least productive and automated step. As such, many are seeking to bring automation into the last mile. 

This report "Mobile Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, and Drones in Logistics, Warehousing, and Delivery 2020-2040" covers the use of mobile robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles in delivery, warehousing, and logistics. It provides a comprehensive analysis of all the key players, technologies, and markets.

It covers automated as well as autonomous carts and robots, automated goods-to-person robots, autonomous and collaborative robots, delivery robots, mobile picking robots, autonomous material handling vehicles such as tuggers and forklifts, autonomous trucks, vans, and last mile delivery robots and drones.

The image shows various autonomous robots and vehicles (sometimes called pods) developed around the world. These come in a variety of shapes and forms, reflecting the diversity and breadth of design and technology choices which must be made to create such products.

These robots, pods, and vehicles are mainly designed from the scratch to be unmanned. They are also almost always battery-powered and electrically-driven. This is for various reasons, including: (1) electronic drive gives better control of motion especially when each wheel can be independently controlled; (2) the interface between the electronic control system and the electrical drive train is simpler, eliminating the need for complex by-wire systems found in autonomous ICE vehicles; and (3) their production process needs to handle vastly fewer parts, and as such could be taken on by smaller manufacturers.

Another key technology and business choice is where to navigate. Many robots are designed to travel on sidewalks and pedestrian pavements, while the van-looking pods and vehicles are often designed to be road-going. This choice of where to travel has determining consequences for the design, technology choice, target markets, and business model. In this article, we focus on sidewalk ground robots, leaving the discussion of road-going pods to a follow-on article.

The sidewalk robots are an interesting proposition. They are often designed to travel slowly at 4-6 km/hr. This is to increase safety, to give robots more thinking time, to give remote teleoperators the chance to intervene, and to enable categorizing the robot as a personal device (vs. a vehicle), thus easing legislative challenges.

These robots also come with various hardware choices. For example, some are few-wheeled while many are six-wheeled. Some include a single small-payload compartment, whilst others carry larger multi-item storage compartments. The key choice however is in what perception sensors to use.

To find out more about Robotics research available from IDTechEx visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/Robotics