JD's logistic arm test unmanned robotic grocery deliveries in Suzhou - PingWest

JD's logistic arm test unmanned robotic grocery deliveries in Suzhou

JD's logistic arm test unmanned robotic grocery deliveries in Suzhou

10 hours ago

Dada Nexus, the logistics affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, is piloting unmanned grocery deliveries in China’s eastern Jiangsu province through partnership with Beijing-based robotics company Infermove.

Two companies will dispatch a team of sidewalk robots to deliver parcels for local merchants in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. The delivery robots weigh 50 kilograms and can carry loads of up to 115kg.

Dada’s autonomous delivery service so far has been adopted by JD’s omnichannel supermarket brand Seven Fresh and Tencent-backed Yonghui Supermarket to deliver on-demand order to more than 10 neighborhoods in Beijing and Shanghai. The vehicle can still manage delivering works in bad weather conditions when human couriers have low work-efficiency.

According to Chinese businesses registration and information provider Tianyancha, JD Group is the largest shareholder with a 47.4 per cent stake in Dada.

In 2016, JD merged its JD Daojia unit with Dada Nexus and provided USD200 million in cash to Dada Nexus, receiving about 47% of the company’s equity. JD.com operates operated a network of unmanned delivery services in domestic market beside its online platform and warehouses.

JD has launched a platform for its autonomous delivery service, partnering with autonomous delivery vehicle developer White Rhino to collaborate on building the autonomous delivery ecosystem for supermarket and shopping malls.

Backed by MiraclePlus start-up accelerator, which is founded by former Baidu president Qi Lu, Beijing based Infermove specializes in robotics and low-speed autonomous driving research. Infermove’s robots are able to travel automatically from its Silicon Valley office to Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, the company showed this technological breakthrough to public in September last year.

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