Three ways we can get smarter about transportation 
Ocado Technology is a company from UK that develops software and systems that power the online grocery retail platforms.
- Intelligent transportation at Ocado
We would like to take into consideration the kind of van Ocado uses to distribute.
Each Ocado van has a vast collection of sensors and embedded computing devices that stream information about the transportation infrastructure to the cloud in real-time. For example, these low-power embedded sensors constantly measure wheel speed, fuel consumption, engine revs, gear changes, braking and cornering speeds, bumps in the road, temperature, and other useful data. When correlated to the map of public roads in the UK, this information helps the Ocado Technology data science team figure out optimal routes for delivery so that drivers can actually fulfill the one-hour slot promise to customers.
- The need for an infrastructure upgrade: Smart cars need smarter roads
It is needed an implementation about how they make cars smarter.
Implementing advanced computer vision capabilities is a step in the right direction for manufacturers looking to improve road safety. However, the self-driving cars of tomorrow may quickly find themselves stuck on the same congested roads if the infrastructure doesn’t get a major upgrade as well.
If the idea is to reduce (or even eliminate) road congestions, the computing embed into the vans must be mirrored by a similar bump in the intelligence of the roads.
At Ocado, they have been building an infrastructure of connected vans which enables them to find the optimal routes. If more cars driving would have these sensors on board they could then extend this concept to a larger scale and guide vehicles automatically on the best routes available. A simple sprinkle of smartness could make a big difference when it comes to driverless vehicles.
Finally, driverless vehicles are going to have to be way smarter because they will have to share the roads with cars driven by humans. We therefore need to develop new communications protocols that enable cars (driverless or not) to talk to each other and to the environment around them (e.g. traffic lights).
Ocado and transportation
First of all, let’s understand how Ocado’s operational model works.
Before they can get customers’ groceries into Ocado delivery vans, they first need to be shipped to one of their warehouses, called Customer Fulfilment Centers (CFC).
For the suppliers, the most common way of sending large quantities of products to their warehouses is to employ commercial trucks.
In addition to the CFCs, they also use their own trucks to transport products to smaller local distribution centers called spokes.(Spokes are a very small warehouse where a large batch of orders comes in and then immediately gets distributed to our smaller vans.
The diagram below shows an overview of our entire distribution model and covers some of the points I’ve touched on in my introduction:
- Truck meets technology
It is real that there is a lot of inefficient in single-truck deliveries. One way to improve haulage management is to organize vehicles in fleet-type formations: the leading truck determines the fleet’s route and speed while the others receive instructions through a low latency wireless connection.
Even though self-driving trucks would have a high degree of automation on board, human drivers would still be able to assume control under certain conditions.
The advantage of having such a convoy is that trucks drive at consistent speeds and on optimized routes, which would help relieve congestion on many European roads.
Self-driving truck convoys can benefit their human drivers too reducing the sedentary lifestyle of the drivers and reducing the time they have to be away from home. It also could improve safety by reducing the number and severity of accidents caused by commercial vehicles.
- Challenges under the hood
As you can imagine, there are still quite a few challenges with this innovation.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the regulation needed to go from a few trials in remote areas to deploying these automated vehicles at a large scale. This will likely take years since routes can cover multiple countries; we therefore need to achieve consistency between the traffic codes and regulations of each territory in a region in order to implement a unified fleet.
Companies need to be aware of the public perception when it comes to computer-controlled machines. There are potential security implications related to using these vehicles for other purposes than those they were originally designed for, including as weapons
Are drones the answer to faster home delivery?
Deliveries via drones are a very good idea as they are imminent. Huge companies such Amazon and Walmart are talking up drones nowadays.
But there are a lot of safety implications that need to be addressed before commercial drones can be used around people.
There is a publication in the MailOne from the past July 26th, where the author explains that Amazon's futuristic fleet of autonomous delivery drones could be equipped with data grabbing sensors. This would allow the vehicles to scan your home at the same time as dropping off your package.
This means that Amazon delivery drones could scan your home to work out what products it should sell to you, completely loosing the privacy.
However, there are two essential metrics associated with home deliveries: route density and drop size. These are incredibly important when it comes to the entire delivery process, regardless of whether you’re sending goods using a van or a drone.
(Route density is the number of drop offs for a given delivery route; the drop size is the number of items delivered to each customer along a route.)
Given that most customers place an order once per week, a delivery typically includes tens of products weighing several kilograms altogether.
Most drones struggle to carry anything above a couple of kilograms and have a limited range of 10-15 miles; that’s good enough for a burrito or a USB stick but not suitable for a crate of ambient, chilled and frozen products flown tens of kilometers from a delivery center into your backyard. These limitations affect both route density and the drop size and mean vans still have the edge over drones when it comes to last mile deliveries for the foreseeable future.
That doesn’t mean that the technology to lift goods into the air doesn’t have immediate applications for grocery deliveries; it’s just that drones will be part of the solution, and not the solution. A company might choose to handle small, top-up or ad-hoc type orders using drones for example (imagine something the size of your lunch being flown in via drone) while larger, weekly orders will still be delivered using the more familiar van method.
Webgraphy
Alex Voica. (9 Feb 2017). Three ways we can get smarter about transportation. https://ocadotechnology.com/blog/three-ways-we-can-get-smarter-about-transportation/
Tim Collins. (26 July 2017). MailOne. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4731578/Amazon-delivery-drones-scan-home.html
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