The Covid-19 led lockdown and its impact on eCommerce resulted in the federal government approving drone-based deliveries in India in June. Though nothing more was heard on this front since, online marketplace Snapdeal has now announced that it had conducted last-mile delivery using robots.
Snapdeal says it joined hands with autonomous mobility startup Ottonomy IO to complete last-mile delivery on orders that were placed from select locations in the Delhi NCR region. The packages that were delivered to the doorstep also were sanitized on the way.
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The drone experiment
Earlier in June, India's civil aviation regulator, DGCA, had approved a request from a consortium of 13 different retailers to start drone delivery on a beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) plan. The companies that were part of the Clearsky Flight Consortium include Zomato, Swiggy, and Dunzo besides Spicejet and Asteria Aerospace.
DDCA saw this as an experimental project in understanding the prerequisites for flying drones outside the visual line of sight before announcing the actual regulatory policies around this. The trial plan was for two months and there has been no update on this front till now.
In 2019, Zomato has conducted a trial run of drone-based delivery when its drones delivered a payload of around 5 kgs and covered a distance of 5 Kilometres in just 10 minutes.
How the robots are different
The robots, shaped in the form of a small delivery van, developed by Ottonomy IO can move along sidewalks and local streets, using AI algorithms to navigate crowded areas. The robots also use machine learning that it juxtaposes against data from 3D Lidar and cameras to get a handle on the location that it moves in.
In a statement, Snapdeal said the robot had a map and were stationed at the entrance of large apartment buildings wherein the delivery agent scanned a QR code and placed the package inside the robotic vehicle. Since there are multiple orders within, the QR code used by the end customer is what unlocks the package hold area within the vehicle.
The delivery robots also have ultraviolet lighting that sanitises the package while it is navigating to the delivery location. The delivery agent can remotely monitor the robots and control them in case human intervention is required to navigate within a closed community.
In a statement, Ritukar Vijay, co-founder of Ottonomy IO described contactless delivery as the need of the hour and said automating last-mile delivery addresses safety concerns of both the shoppers and the delivery professionals. The company is now looking to scale the project to include more cities and eventually also spread globally.
Snapdeal believes that delivery robots would have a large role to play in the spread of online retail in India, especially in large townships, institutional campuses and residential apartment blocks.
