Autonomous Last-Mile Delivery in E-commerce

Published May 15, 2020

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Written by: Koyel Ghosh
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Koyel Ghosh

Koyel Ghosh is a blogger with a strong passion and enjoys writing on miscellaneous domains, as she believes it lets her explore a wide variety of niches. She has an innate interest for creativity and enjoys experimenting with different writing styles. A writer who never stops imagining, she has been serving the corporate industry for the last three years.

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It must be an amazing feeling to get your online order delivered the next day or on the very same day itself. You would not only feel special but would also develop trust and reliability for the respective company. Nevertheless, the scenario used to be quite different. But, in the last few years, high-end innovation in technology has boosted the logistics industry in more than one way, while driving the e-commerce industry with the same spur.

With the significant surge in the e-commerce business, organizations worldwide have turned out to be highly subtle as well as delicate in yielding consumer preferences. Especially in a scenario where instant satisfaction has come to epitomize our generation in large, independent and self-directed technologies are meant to make a significant impact. 

Benefits of Last-mile Delivery

As the name suggests itself, last-mile delivery can be considered or defined as the last move of the delivery course, which betides from the shipping hub to the users’ doorsteps. And, here, it’s worth mentioning that the last-mile delivery can range just within a few blocks. The distance can just be between fifty and a hundred miles. The main objective of this system is to distribute the packages among the customers at the earliest note. This way, the last-mile is, quite naturally, deemed to be the most vital part in the supply chain and logistics business. A key to the customer consummation and fulfillment, last-mile is again the most time taking and exorbitant part of the whole shipping process.

So, if done correctly, it can save a significant amount of money and time, which, in turn, can make your business both competent and lucrative. However, all last-mile deliveries are not of the same nature. When some are simple and pretty facile involving just a trip on freeways and expressways shoring up a certain number of deliveries, the others are somewhat a bit complex, which includes course-plotting. In such a case, the system has to traverse through all the nooks and crannies of the rustic area to make the delivery.

Here, the feature of route optimization tends to play an important role in curtailing down the total delivery time by detecting the most effective directions. It takes several crucial factors like stream of traffic, location, size, etc. to turn up with the most efficient paths or courses. Besides, it also permits you to make any final changes by conveying a real-time update to the driver.

Finally, the last-mile delivery system makes your delivery process translucent by doling out real-time status updates of the shipments to the customers. This way, customers would know precisely when their shipment would be taken round to their doorsteps. They will also be acknowledged if there is any postponement. The customers can also interact with the delivery service mediators, in case they want to put up an issue.

Autonomous Last-mile Delivery

According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous last-mile delivery market is projected to grow at a considerable CAGR from 2021–2030. The top market players have played a significant role in driving the growth of the industry. For example, Amazon has reportedly launched a delivery robot named Scout. Coming up with a size as trivial as of a small cooler, the robot can wheel across the walkways and hand over packages to the customers. When this innovative initiative by Amazon has made the industry come across a new concept of last-mile delivery service, the other top ventures have also not laid back from showcasing their flairs in this regard.

As people have become more dynamic, their demands for fast delivery of packages have also increased to a significant extent. Furthermore, developments in the shipping vehicles and several effective, as well as top-notch ways to dispatch packages, are the prime reasons fueling the growth of the autonomous last-mile delivery market. On the other hand, inadequate infrastructure to prop up advanced delivery services is anticipated to restrain the growth to some extent. However, the advent of aerial delivery drones has almost modulated the impeding factor and seemed to pave the way for an array of thriving opportunities in the industry. To conclude, it can be asserted that the market has started growing quite abundantly, and in the next few years to come, it’s projected to tumefy yet more.

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