Alibaba launches logistics robot for last-mile deliveries to lower costs and as pandemic pushes automation
- The robot can deliver as many as 500 packages a day to one designated community or campus
China’s biggest e-commerce player Alibaba Group Holding has unveiled an autonomous logistics robot aimed at bringing down the cost of last-mile deliveries and in line with a broader push towards automated deliveries by e-commerce companies amid the pandemic.
Xiaomanlv, which translates into English roughly as ‘little competent donkey’, can deliver as many as 500 packages a day to one designated community or campus carrying 50 packages at a time. It can also cover 100km on a single charge, according to a statement on Thursday by Alibaba at its annual Apsara cloud computing event.
“The trends in new retail and online services have driven up the requirements for delivery services, with the number of deliveries per day expected to exceed one billion in the near future,” said Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, at the event. “Last-mile delivery is the most expensive and inefficient part of the whole supply chain.”
“The demographic dividend in China will disappear in the future, and the cost of human labour will be much higher. Using machines in the future to solve last-mile delivery is a must,” said Zhao Yue, an analyst at research firm Analysys.
In the US meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration designated Amazon Prime Air as an “air carrier” last month, allowing the e-commerce giant to begin its first commercial deliveries via drones in the country under a trial program.