Continental pioneers robot parcel delivery in CUbE
The technology company Continental tells us that it continues to steadily push the boundaries of autonomous vehicle technology, exploring new use cases and advancements every day. At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Continental exhibited how a driverless vehicle could be used to stage and deploy delivery robots, taking packages all the way to the consumer – even when they’re not able to physically receive them.
The seamless integration of a driverless vehicle – in this case, the Continental Urban Mobility Experience (CUbE) – and a delivery robot present a more effective and efficient distribution of goods. The CUbE, Continental’s autonomous electrified development platform, is generally considered as a solution for urban “first or last mile” mobility. This type of vehicle – often referred to as a robo-taxi or pod – will be a part of the seamless mobility value chain.
The purpose of these vehicles will be extended to goods delivery to further utilise the available transport capacity and reduce idle times. Market estimations show that the need to transport goods will even outpace the strongly growing need for people transport in densely populated areas. With expertise in scalable technologies and solutions like sensors, environment perception and modelling, localisation, positioning, situation analysis, decision making and mechatronic actuators, Continental has the solutions and know-how to address this need.
“With the help of robot delivery, Continental’s vision for seamless mobility can extend right to your doorstep. Our vision of cascaded robot delivery leverages a driverless vehicle to carry delivery robots, creating an efficient transport team,” said Ralph Lauxmann, Head of Systems & Technology, Chassis & Safety division, Continental.
He added: “Both are electrified, both are autonomous and, in principle, both can be based on the same scalable technology portfolio. These connections create an exciting potential for holistic delivery concepts using similar solutions for different platforms. Beyond this technology foundation, it’s reasonable to expect a whole value chain to develop in this area.”