 |
| The Neologix bot trundling on its rounds in the tech suburb of Yizhuang in Beijing. |
Beijing started testing self-driving delivery bots from three companies — JD.com, Meituan and Neolix — on Tuesday.
For now, the bots, which are basically self-driving vending machines, trundle on their delivery rounds only on designated public roads in the capital city’s tech suburb, Yizhuang.
All the bots are monitored by human controllers. This type of technology has been proven for over a decade on giant trucks in open-cast mines in Australia and Chile, and already delivers KFC in select suburbs in Shanghai, but human drivers and even vendors pushing carts don’t have to worry about robots taking their job for many years — if ever.
The technology needs superfast 5G towers to carry the data-heavy signals between the vehicles and satellites, expensive capacitors that are currently in very short supply and — most important — buy-in from consumers.
While cities around the world are doing similar robot and autonomous taxi tests, with Canterbury in New Zealand and Dubai arguably leading the race to free their cities of traffic after successful tests of two-seater drones, the public remains leery.
 |
| Neolix’s delivery bot delivering KFC in Shanghai. |
Nigeria and South Africa’s consumers are typical examples, with Nigerian religious leaders preaching against 5G towers, and local conspiracy theories leading to the burning of three 5G-towers in Durban in January.
Such distrust is not, however, the main obstacle to the roll-out of autonomous transport.
Artificial intelligence is, in the words of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, still “no smarter than a cockroach”; legal questions abound on who to sue after a crash; and most important, the costs of autonomous systems compared to a vendor’s cart, are all keeping delivery bots and robocars limited to carefully geo-fenced streets.
Instead of these robots taking over, the number of courier drivers who pilot drones to drop off small parcels looks set to grow much faster in the near future.
