The project HITS - Sustainable and Integrated Urban Transport System - aims to develop efficient transport solutions for cleaner and safer cities. Working with partners from industry, academia and government, they have been exploring the potential for using robots to streamline the process of unloading goods. As a result, Carrie the robot is now delivering parcels at the Mall of Scandinavia!
Studies show that truck drivers spend a sizable amount of time outside their vehicles, loading and unloading goods. Scania, in collaboration with partners, is therefore exploring the potential for using robots to unload goods at the point of delivery.
The external monitoring that the project also carried out showed that there is a strong focus on solving the ‘last-mile’ transport needs of end consumers. The survey showed that there is a lack of solutions that support the driver in his work and can streamline loading and unloading.
Automating the delivery of goods, such as cages, bins, pallets, can offer great opportunities to make urban transport more efficient. However, the challenges go beyond automating the vehicle itself. Today, the driver is an important part of the delivery process as they handle communication with both the sender and the recipient, as well as loading and unloading. Here, an automated last-metre delivery robot can help reduce this problem by offering a faster, safer, more flexible and unmanned solution. For the recipient, this means they no longer need to tie up staff to wait for the goods, saving both time and costs.
Sweden’s Dyno Robotics is developing the prototype Carrie robot to demonstrate how a goods cage automatically can be offloaded from trucks at loading bays and subsequently travel through a maze of interior corridors as well as using lifts for destination delivery. The cage is equipped with a RFID tag so that the robot identifies the correct cage and recipient.
The selected demonstration site is Stockholm’s Westfield Mall of Scandinavia, one of the largest shopping centres in the Nordic countries with more than 200 shops and restaurants.
Arriving at the loading bay with Havi’s Scania electric distribution truck, Carrie steers off the cargo box onto the dock. Having been previously programmed, it embarks on its journey through a set of turns and twists on its way to the goods entrance of a clothing shop. Travelling autonomously at one half-metre per second, the robot adeptly manoeuvres through interior corridors but it also needs to go up several floors.
HITS (Sustainable and Integrated Urban Transport System) is a cooperative initiative across a number of different industries that aims to develop efficient transport solutions and create cleaner and safer cities. The project participants include property owners, city authorities, municipalities, engineering and logistics companies and research institutions. The project is led by Scania, coordinated by CLOSER and financed by VINNOVA.
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