Today, U.S. households receive 3.5 billion packages per year; by 2030, this number is projected to double, exceeding 7 billion. But who will deliver these packages, and how? Parcel transport remains bottlenecked by what is by far its most costly and challenging segment: last-mile delivery. The repetitive stop-drop-and-go process carried out by hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers is inefficient, error-prone, and increasingly taxing, with workforce attrition at a historic high as drivers and fleets struggle to keep up with the relentless growth in delivery demand. Our innovation tackles the problem at its heart by reinventing how packages cover the last, crucial 50 feet from the delivery vehicle to the customer's doorstep. At the core is a patent-pending delivery robot design that seamlessly combines legs and wheels to hop off the van, sweep through residential areas, vault over curbs and stairs, and deposit packages at secure locations before breezing back to the van. The robot's agile motion is made possible by its groundbreaking real-time safety analysis, which uses state-of-the-art AI to continually anticipate possible contingencies and preempt no-win scenarios before they arise, additionally generating second-by-second safety logs to facilitate regulatory oversight and foster public trust. The ability to parallelize multiple robots' van-to-door trips means that the human driver can stay in the vehicle for most residential deliveries and still achieve up to double the rate of deliveries per vehicle hour. All in all, our technology unlocks a projected $10 billion in annual savings industry-wide, all while plugging right into the existing fleet infrastructure.
Current Members
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering