Workshop
Motivation, Focus, and Goals
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The last-mile delivery is the most expensive and difficult component of the supply chain that significantly contributes to global carbon emissions. The Covid19 pandemic and drastic expansion of the e-commerce market accelerated the adoption of autonomous last-mile robots, ground (e.g. sidewalk, pod, van, trucks) and aerial (e.g. drones) to tackle supply chain constraints and challenges, labour shortages, and consumer demands. However, the norms of last-mile delivery are changing due to evolving consumer needs (e.g. fast, frequent & secured delivery) and logistic industry requirements with sustainability and human-centricity goals (Logistics 5.0).
It is envisioned that the next wave of autonomous last-mile robots will be human-centric and energy-efficient, combining advanced technical capabilities (e.g., autonomous mobility, manipulation, and localization) with collaborative aspects (e.g., human-robot interaction, socially aware navigation, heterogeneous fleet coordination and collaborative task execution). These robots will increase the logistic operations' efficiency, sustainability, and resilience and handle order pickup to last-mile delivery.
This workshop will identify and discuss various existing and envisioned robot-assisted last-mile delivery models, systems and technologies. The workshop will analyze the lessons learned (with particular attention to the numerous cases of failure), and highlight challenges, research gaps, and real-world problems faced by last-mile robot platforms, especially making efforts to contribute towards a faster, more frequent, reliable, safer and sustainable last-mile delivery process. Fig.1 illustrates a last-mile delivery ecosystem, from local fulfilment/distribution channels to the number of robot-assisted delivery options to the unstructured and uncertain consumer-end environments. We would like to address some questions related to the topic:
Fig.1 An Exemplary Last-Mile Delivery Ecosystem
The Workshop Address
We would like to address some questions related to the topic:
What lessons were learned from past last-mile delivery robot projects, and how to address the shortcomings and meet the near-term value requirements and customer needs? Example case studies: FedEx-RoXo and Amazon-Scout last-mile delivery robot projects.
What kind of robotic technologies should be developed within the last-mile robot platforms to increase the level of acceptance from the general public and allow robots to respect and coexist with unstructured and uncertain environments (e.g. pedestrians, kids, cyclists, vehicles, all-weather conditions and mixed-transport systems)?
What are the challenges and opportunities in using heterogeneous fleets (autonomous drones, vehicles and mobile manipulators) for fast and frequent last-mile delivery?
What are the collaborative/wearable/self-service technologies likely to create customer value in last-mile delivery, and how could these solutions be effectively integrated with delivery robots?
How existing regulations and standards could influence the technological development and deployment of these robotic solutions in last-mile delivery environments?
This workshop aims to
The workshop would feature invited talks from academia and industry, poster discussions of solicited and accepted papers, spot-light talks of selected papers, and a panel discussion. The workshop aims to build a research community to engage and contribute toward realizing Next-Gen last-mile robots and sustainable future delivery models. Moreover, the workshop will contribute to a detailed understanding of the existing and envisioned last-mile delivery robots and models that bridge the knowledge and technological gap among researchers, logistics operators and entrepreneurs and seeds toward building start-up companies.
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