Shift Magazine - October 7, 2019 - 20

DELIVERING the GOODS
As e-commerce grows,
companies are seeking
the best ways to get
products to customers
BY SEBASTIAN BLANCO
AND ALEXA ST. JOHN

lick by click, it's growing.
According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, e-commerce, as a percentage of all U.S. retail sales,
has been climbing for the last decade,
from about 4 percent in 2010 to almost
11 percent in the first quarter of 2019.
As consumers buy more goods online,
the search is on for ways to improve package delivery timeliness and efficiency.
For some delivery companies, automakers and suppliers, the answers may lie in
autonomous technology.
Meanwhile, officials are sorting out a
more immediate issue: what long-term
effects the e-commerce boom is having
on America's cities, in particular on traffic.

A MATTER OF TIMING

Alison Conway, associate professor at
Grove School of Engineering at City
College of New York, says growing
demand for short delivery times has
increased the number of neighborhood
fulfillment centers, also known as microwarehouses, springing up, and that
means more trucks rolling into cities.
Then there's the fact that traditional
parcel and e-commerce deliveries happen
at different times of day. The streets in
many urban areas have signs that allow for
deliveries until midmorning. The streets
then switch to metered parking. But e-commerce deliveries can happen on a different
schedule, so there may be nowhere for
delivery vehicles to park.
"E-commerce has changed the spatial
distribution of where [traditional parcel]
vehicles need to park, and we are just
starting to figure out what changes need
to be made to the network," Conway said.
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shift * october 2019

Among e-commerce delivery options undergoing testing are, clockwise from left, Ford's
Digit, Amazon's Scout and Continental's CUbE robotaxi that carries small delivery robots.

Consider groceries. In New York, Trader
Joe's, FreshDirect, Amazon and Blue
Apron are just a few delivery options.
"Trying to piece all of those out and get
a handle on the impact that it's having on
traffic is something that I think we're only at
the early stages of figuring out," she said.
Allan Rutter agrees. He is the division head of the Freight and Investment
Analysis Interdisciplinary Research Group
at Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Rutter said it's far too early to know how
the tremendous growth of e-commerce
will affect urban traffic because some
trends are still developing. The number
of new customers signing up for grocery
deliveries will be a big factor, he said,
as will the expansion of e-commerce to
people previously unable to participate.
At the same time, the e-commerce
trend also is sparking a search for better
ways to use technology to get products
to customers' doorsteps.

DELIVERY ROBOTS

One scenario is to use a combination of
driverless vehicles and delivery robots.
This year, supplier Continental demonstrated a package delivery system that
employs a robotaxi called CUbE, short for
Continental Urban Mobility Experience,

and a miniature delivery robot.
"Both are electrified, both are autonomous and, in principle, both can be based
on the same scalable technology portfolio," Ralph Lauxmann, head of systems
and technology in Continental's Chassis
& Safety Division, said in a statement.
Driverless vehicles such as CUbE could
act as a kind of mother ship, carrying one
or multiple delivery robots and deploying
them to handle the last yards of the delivery
logistics chain, according to Continental.
The goal is to reduce idle times spent in
traffic and boost transport capacity.
Amazon has been testing a similar lastmile delivery system called Scout. The
devices use camera and sensor data for
autonomous route planning and navigation to transport parcels from urban distribution points to customers, according to
the company. So far, the robot has been
tested in Washington and California.
In Memphis, FedEx has tested a shortrange robot, Roxo, that can travel on
sidewalks, along roadsides, on unpaved
surfaces and up and down steps.
Ford Motor Co. announced the initial
testing of its package-carrying, twolegged headless android concept named
see GOODS, p. 22

Shift Magazine - October 7, 2019

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