Liviu Marcus
With the development in technology, most of the human labor has been replaced by technological solutions. Much of the goods transport service inside the industries has been automated over the years. Automation inside the industries has led to an exponential increment in overall production and has shortened the production times.
The transportation of goods is done by multiple courier services for now. They hire drivers and employees to handle and transport the goods from one point to another. Human labor tends to be slower in repetitive tasks and there’s a greater chance of mishandling.
Keeping a number of human employees, is also not profitable for a company, as human labor will require a greater pay, compared to maintaining an automated robotic system.
Automation for courier delivery can be aerial or land based.
An autonomous aerial service has its own pros and cons with it. As there is almost no interference for an Aerial vehicle at 25-30 m (80ft-100ft) above the surface in terms of a dynamic traffic. At these heights, they only face static obstacle which are easier to pass through and reach their destination. Hence it would take an aerial service to distribute goods much faster than a land based one. And such an Aerial service can be deployed easily due to the simplicity involved in its working.
Aerial autonomous courier service takes a hit due to the limited amount of mass it can carry. So it is only feasible for smaller items or documents.
Early deployment of Aerial services for delivering goods can be seen at Amazon air or at some food vendors providing aerial home delivery services.
Land based Autonomous Courier delivering service has the biggest benefit of possessing large load capacities. But as urban lands are filled with traffic, cyclists and pedestrians, it would be a huge challenge to optimize the system to work in such an environment.
Such systems use cameras, radars and lasers to sense their environment and act appropriately. But they need to be much more rugged and safety complaint before deploying them at such a large scale. But vehicle manufacturers have started to increase the level of autonomy in consumer cars gradually. This shows that sufficient research and development is actively being done in this sector and the deployment of an autonomous land-based courier service isn’t much far either.
In addition to the complexity, a land-based system faces from the on-road dynamic obstacles. It also needs a fancy loading and unloading mechanism to manage the increased amount of goods it can carry.
