Amazon to launch 'postman' robots that can unlock doors to deliver parcels 24 hours-a-day

Robots delivering mail and dropping off parcels inside homes could soon become a familiar sight as an alternative to human drivers.

Amazon has designed small, box-shaped droids capable of opening a door’s smartlock and making deliveries while the resident is at work, or even in the middle of the night.

It is the latest move by Amazon to get inside customers’ homes following the launch of Key, where the recipient watches on a high-definition webcam as a “human agent” lets themselves in to drop off a parcel.

Now the e-commerce giant has published a European patent for “autonomous ground vehicles” [AGV] that retrieve parcels from delivery trucks and drop them off either at the front door or inside the home. Goods will be fished out of a compartment by a “robotic arm” before the device lets itself out.

A Starship Technologies robot
Alamy Stock Photo

The design has a similar look and functionality to the tub-like cargo vehicles piloted for fast food deliveries in Greenwich by Starship Technologies, which are essentially GPS-connected storage boxes on wheels. Amazon’s next-level invention similarly features imaging and proximity sensors and GPS to find the way, plus warning lights and mechanisms to “assist with open access barriers”, such as doors and gates.

This could include a transmitter to wirelessly open a smart lock. The patent states: “An item may be received and delivered by an AGV without requiring a user to be at home. In addition, an AGV may receive and deliver an item when a user is busy or otherwise unavailable... on a phone call or sleeping.

Items may also be received and delivered by

AGVs at times that may be more conducive for deliveries, eg between 2am and 6am.” Other features could include a touch-screen, keypad and biometric scanner for the package recipient to identify themselves.

The storage compartment could also be refrigerated for transporting groceries. It is proposed that the robots would be owned by a group of neighbours or block of flats, where it could dock itself to charge in a lobby or garage and then roll out to collect from trucks as required, or it might be based in a customer’s hallway or utility room.

Amazon declined to comment on the patent, but previously Peter Larsen, the firm’s vice president of delivery technology said its Key camera system lets customers “select in-home delivery and conveniently see their packages being delivered right from their mobile phones”.

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