Boxes of drugs urgently needed by users are being sent to the epidemic area in Shenzhen by drones. 10 minutes steaming takeaway one-click order, delivered to the door by drone ... This is not a scene in science fiction, but a scene that has been realized. In the UAV application scenario of Meituan, a low-altitude logistics network with a distance of 3 kilometers and 15 minutes has been the goal of exploration for 4 years.
At the 202 1 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held on July 8, Meituan made its official debut with 90% self-developed drones. Wang, senior vice president of Meituan and president of the business group, believes that the urban low-altitude logistics network will become an important opportunity for scientific and technological innovation in the next decade or two, and the combination of drones and life scenes is the best way to build a low-altitude logistics network.
The scale will be realized in the next 5- 10 years.
With the continuous progress of artificial intelligence and other technologies in recent years, urban low-altitude flight began to shift from civilian shooting to large-scale industrial use. Different from the plant protection drones that have been widely used in agriculture, the complex buildings and road conditions in cities have brought great challenges to the flight of drones. Mao Yinian, the head of the UAV business of Meituan, bluntly said that this is the "most extreme challenge".
First of all, we must ensure the safety and reliability in the process of large-scale landing; Secondly, while the policies and regulations in the field of commercial drones are still not perfect, it is necessary to cooperate with the government to promote the establishment and landing of standards; In addition, on the client side, it is necessary to establish the user's acceptance and use mind.
It took Mao a year to introduce that at present, the drone can land stably under the five-level wind, and it will not work in rainy and snowy weather for safety reasons, but this problem can be solved in the next three to five years.
In the next year or two, I hope to operate multiple business districts and multiple routes at the same time; In the next 5- 10 years, we will realize the large-scale application of drones and cooperate with takeaway brothers to improve work efficiency and work experience.
Mao Yinian revealed that in addition to community distribution stations, Meituan is still carrying out ground receiving equipment for apartments, buildings and other scenes. For example, in cooperation with Vanke, you can take out the lunch box sent by the drone by opening the locker in the kitchen in the future.
"What we are exploring is not only the distribution of the aircraft itself, but also the construction of an urban low-altitude logistics network integrating autonomous flying drones, automated airports and drone dispatching systems. Through the five self-developed technical capabilities of aircraft, navigation control, AI algorithm, route management and communication system, it adapts to various scenarios such as communities, shopping malls and office buildings, allowing drones and riders to form man-machine collaborative distribution and truly realize' everything comes home'. " Mao Yinian said.
No one went to save the deer.
Unmanned distribution industry is divided into indoor distribution and outdoor distribution. Indoor distribution equipment is mainly distribution robots, and outdoor distribution is distribution logistics vehicles and drones.
It is understood that at the beginning of this year, Meituan UAV has completed the first delivery task of real users in Shenzhen, and in the subsequent Shenzhen epidemic, it established an "air passage" for urban material transportation in Nanshan District of Shenzhen to distribute emergency supplies to residents in the isolation area. As of June 20021year, Meituan UAV has completed more than 200,000 flight tests and delivered more than 2,500 real orders.
At this conference, in addition to drones, Meituan also brought the unmanned delivery vehicle "Magic Bag 20", which also indicates that Meituan unmanned delivery vehicle has standardized mass production capacity and entered a new stage of development. Meituan predicts that in the next three years, unmanned delivery services will be implemented in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other regions and cities for commercial scenes such as take-away, grocery shopping and flash shopping.
In fact, it is not just the US Mission, but all major enterprises are deploying unmanned distribution.
20 12 Wang Wei, chairman of SF Express, put forward the concept of UAV logistics. In August, 2020, SF completed the cargo flight based on business scenarios for the first time, which was also the first time that large UAVs were used in logistics scenarios in China.
JD.COM also set up JD.COM X branch on 20 16 to develop and deploy unmanned distribution tasks. In June 5438 +2020 10, the ground test of the "Jingting" UAV with completely independent intellectual property rights in JD.COM began, which is also the first UAV with the function of airdropping in the cabin with a load of several hundred kilograms in China.
In 20 17, when the US delegation was empty, it was hungry and announced that the drone was on the line. On average, it took only 20 minutes to receive the takeaway.
In 20 18, the rookie announced that he would join hands with partners to build 65,438+10,000 unmanned devices; In 20021year, Li Cheng, chief technology officer of Alibaba and rookie, proposed that 1000 logistics unmanned vehicles "Little Donkeys" would be put into campus and community in the coming year.
In foreign countries, Amazon, Google and even Wal-Mart have not stopped exploring the pace of unmanned distribution. As early as 20 13, Amazon began to study the layout of drone delivery; 20 17 12, Amazon completed the first UAV distribution test in Cambridge, England; In September 2020, it obtained the qualification for the operation of distribution drones.
This is a highly competitive market. Amazon has predicted that by 2030, half of the orders in the US e-commerce market will be delivered by drones.
Back to the landing business, from the last mile of the key layout of Meituan, Forward-looking Industry Research Institute once said that the core problem is that distribution efficiency, distribution safety and distribution service quality cannot be achieved at the same time, and it is necessary to reduce costs and increase efficiency on the supply side and add more intelligent means to optimize.
For distribution logistics vehicles, because the technology is in the experimental stage, the relevant manufacturing industry chain is not perfect, and the production and maintenance costs remain high, which leads to the fact that the government only provides technology research and development policies instead of scene landing policies in practical application.
In addition, the impact of low-altitude flight on public safety, policy restrictions on commercial application of drones, and merchants' refusal to accept distribution robots due to purchase costs are all gaps in the face of unmanned distribution. When technology develops for the purpose of universal benefit, while chanting the slogan of technology for goodness, the problems that need to be solved, such as personal safety, data security, acceptance of consumers and enterprises, and policy compliance, need to be carefully considered.
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