DPD has announced that it will start robot deliveries in the UK, following the success of its UK trial, and this will be rolled out to 10 UK towns and cities over the next 12 mon, this follows on from a trial that DPD ran in Milton Keynes.
The first robot deliveries will start with Raunds in Northamptonshire, the Milton Keynes trials started in July of last year and the delivery robots traveled around 500 miles during the trial with over 2,500 deliveries being made to customers.
Based at DPD’s depot at Warth Park on the western edge of Raunds, the robots will deliver to nearby residential areas within a mile of the depot, via the existing network of footpaths. In Raunds, the robots will have three separate parcel compartments, instead of just one in the original trial, and an extended battery life of up to 12 hours.
DPD parcel recipients in Raunds will be notified of a robot delivery in advance, and once they confirm that they are at home to accept the parcel, the robot will be dispatched.
Customers will then be able to track the robot’s progress on a map and are notified when it reaches their property. They then use a code to open the secure compartment and access their parcel. Once the compartment is closed, the robot will either continue to its next delivery or return to the depot.
DPD has worked closely with North Northamptonshire Council on the introduction of the robots in Raunds.
Cllr Graham Lawman, North Northamptonshire Council’s Executive Member for Highways, Travel and Assets, said: “We are delighted that DPD is introducing delivery robots in Raunds. The council is committed to the environment and supporting clean and green alternatives to traditional forms of transport to reduce emissions. It is great to be able to help bring this innovation to North Northamptonshire.”
Tim Jones, Director of Marketing, Communications & Sustainability DPDgroup UK commented, “The trial in Milton Keynes has been a huge success for us. The robots have exceeded our expectations, and the feedback has been fantastic. We can see people’s reactions when they meet them, and it is overwhelmingly positive. We set out to understand the role that delivery robots could play in certain locations in the UK and the trial has helped us identify more sites where we could deploy the robots successfully.
You can find out more information about the DPD robot deliveries over at DPD at the link below, it will be interesting to see how many more cities and towns this is expanded to in the future.
Source DPD
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