#last-mile-logistics

#last-mile-logistics

On her smartphone map, she watched the tiny dot scurrying toward her Fort Lauderdale address in real time. Then her phone buzzed with an alert: "Your food delivery robot is here!" Karla Joan Nelson-Thatcher raced downstairs to the sidewalk outside her Veneto Las Olas apartment and found, waiting near the front steps, what resembled a 3-foot-tall picnic basket on wheels with glowing Pac-Man eyes.

Climbing onto the Honda Fastport eQuad is, quite literally, just like getting on a bicycle, except easier. With four wheels and broad diamond-plate running boards on either side, ingress and egress is as simple as swinging my leg over and stepping on and off the pedals, no kickstands involved. This makes sense, as the e-bike-based mini box-truck has been custom designed and constructed by the Japanese transportation company for the constant stop-and-go of urban e-commerce package delivery.

Amazon will be building a new distribution center at the corner of South Seventh Street and East Alma Avenue. The company acquired the 17.8-acre site five years ago for $59.3 million, and now is moving forward to replace six existing industrial buildings with a modern facility. This last-mile e-commerce hub totals 106,800 square feet, including 8,700 square feet of office space and 36,600 square feet for staging and loading, designed to handle efficient package sorting and dispatch.

The robot dog has been trained to jump in and out of the van, navigate to customers' doors, and drop off packages without any assistance. Milo will be joining Evri's regular drivers over the next fortnight as they make their rounds in Morley, Leeds. Evri hopes that these robot co-pilots will take the strain off their human counterparts, freeing up more time for complex jobs like parking or navigating.