DHL tests robots-postmen

Post bots will follow the postman-people on their heels and carry on themselves up to 150 kg of letters, newspapers and parcels, writes New Atlas.

When we think of the future delivery service, the first to come to mind are flying drones. But one of the world's largest postal companies DHL believes that ground robots can play a huge role here. Already, the German postal service has begun testing the robot-postman, which will save the postal employees from having to carry heavy bags and will allow them to deliver letters and parcels more quickly.

Within the framework of the pilot project, electric postal bots will work on the streets of Germany for the next six weeks. The postman robot is a self-propelled container on wheels 150 cm high. It can develop a speed of up to 6 km / h, which corresponds to a fast pace of a person, and carry up to 150 kg of mail. A set of sensors helps the bot to skirt obstacles on city sidewalks. The main function of the device is to follow the heel of the live mailman along his usual route.

We want our employees to be able to cope with this difficult, physically challenging work, even when they become elderly, "explained representative of the Deutsche Post DHL Group Juergen Gerdes. "To facilitate their work, we already use electric bikes to deliver mail, and now we come up with what innovations from the field of robotics could help them. An experiment with mail bots will give us an understanding of which direction to move on