Logistics industry is disrupted by emerging technology. As we know, traditional logistics industry highly depends on labor resources. Instead, unmanned logistics system is being achieved through unmanned warehouse, unmanned mainline delivery and unmanned end delivery. Unmanned warehouse aims at autonomous storage, picking, packaging, sorting and so on. Unmanned mainline delivery aims at long-distance transport by autonomous trucks. Unmanned end delivery solves the last-mile-delivery problem by using drones and autonomous vehicles.
The technology of autonomous driving has long been discussed and developed by companies like Google、Tesla and Baidu. Autonomous driving depends on bigdata, crowdsourcing, sensors and vision technology. Although the technology has been greatly improved, lack of security test made it cannot be fully applied in real commercial situation in a short time. For example, most people are unwilling to take autonomous cars at present. However, in China, the prosperous ecommerce promotes logistics industry and this becomes a realistic application area for autonomous driving and drones.
In China, the demographic dividend is disappearing and there will be a shortage of couriers and truck drivers in the future. So unmanned logistics system is a good solution. Main ecommerce companies such as Alibaba Group, JD Group and express company like SF express are engaged in unmanned logistics system. In downtown area, small autonomous logistics vehicles are in experimentation to delivery small goods in communities. In rural area, drones are tested to be a main force for delivery because of the inconvenient transportation and sparse population. Thus, unmanned logistics system lowers the cost of logistics industry and breaks the barriers for ecommerce companies to enter more potential market.
Unmanned logistics is disrupting traditional logistics industry. However, there are still many problems to be solved. Firstly, the performance of autonomous vehicles and drones used for logistics should be improved to achieve higher level of safety, accuracy and capacity with lower cost. These of course require more advanced and mature technology. Secondly, regulatory approval and legislation changes are needed for nationwide use of unmanned delivery, such as related policies and emergency plans. Thirdly, the supporting facilities for unmanned logistics should be facilitated, such as intelligent cabinets which are used to store packages from unmanned logistics which can only be opened by its holder and distribution stations in rural area to finish the last journey of delivering packages.
In all, logistics industry has been disrupted by emerging technology and unmanned logistics will play an important role in the future. As for now, there are huge chances for high-tech companies and incumbents of logistics industry who retain existing logistic network.
Sources:
1.Heutger, M., M. Kückelhaus, K. Zeiler, D. Niezgoda, G. Chung. (2014) Self-Driving Vehicles in 21 Logistics. DHL Trend Research.
2.https://cerasis.com/2017/05/24/autonomous-vehicles-in-logistics/
3.https://36kr.com/p/5136791.html
4.http://www.xinhuanet.com/info/2018-07/23/c_137342324.htm
Thank you for your post. I think it might be good combination between autonomous vehicles and logistics industry. Not only China, but also many countries may face challenge of the shortage of labors, however, the logistics industry will become more and more important in the future. So, the unmanned logistics could be a ideal solution.
On the other hand, since the development of autonomous vehicles still not mature yet, which may not allow unmanned logistics come true. So, for logistics company, maybe they should find out another feasible solution for now.
Very interesting article indeed. To my mind one of the main bottlenecks that will hinder the deployment of large scale autonomous vehicles in particular drones are national regulation and legislative bodies as you mentioned as well. I think technology wise we could expect to see drones flying around on their own within the next years but especially everything related to flight safety is highly regulated. For instance, drones can be flown in certain areas in Europe but they need to be piloted by a human within sight. Thus, we are far away from seeing drones flying around autonomously and used for delivering packages for instance. Just as cargo planes are still flown by pilots even though technology wise the plane could fly on its own. As long as regulative and legislative bodies are not changing existing laws or introducing new regulations faster they will be the main decelerator in the development towards autonomous driving and flying.
Thanks for sharing your views on this interesting topic. After reading your article I had to think back to our introduction reading about hub firms. You are mentioning that you see huge chances also for incumbents in the logistic industry, but I asked myself whether that is really true. Are they not already way behind those big platform players like Alibaba or JD? I have the strong feeling that the data owned by those platform players is more critical in being successful in unmanned logistic solutions than the knowledge about delivery owned by the logistic incumbents. From my point of view, big platform players will win the game in this industry as well.
Thanks for your comment! The big platform players do have great advantages in technic，but the incumbents can defend their position by many ways. On one hand，they have developed delivery network which includes distribution centers and optimized delivery routes. On the other hand, incumbent like SF also cooperated with other high tech companies to develop unmanned logistics.