Ele.me Launches Delivery Robot, an ＂Intelligent Logistics＂ Strategy for Catering O2O Enterprises

The martial arts in the world are only fast and not broken.

In the current technology industry environment, this phrase has become the norm, especially for companies with delivery needs.

Today (October 9), Ele.me and Shanghai Vanke jointly launched a takeaway robot project – Wan Xiaoxiao, which landed in Shanghai Hongqiao Vanke Center and used robots to provide food delivery services to white-collar workers in the building.

From the appearance, "Wan Xiaoxiao Hungry" is composed of a robot chassis that can move autonomously and a three-layer storage body, with a maximum load of 80KG. It can simultaneously deliver three takeaways, with a battery life of eight hours. After the power is exhausted, it can return to the sea for charging.

"Wan Xiaoxiao" delivery robot

The robot can automatically get up and down elevators, avoid obstacles, and adapt to a variety of indoor ground environments (floors, carpets, etc.), and complete food delivery in the building completely autonomously. Orders placed by users on Ele.me and Baidu Takeaway can be delivered by the robot.

However, according to the official news from Shanghai Vanke, the robot currently only supports delivery on the 7th floor of Building 3, Shanghai Hongqiao Vanke Center, and will expand the delivery range in the future.

Last month, Ele.me and Shanghai Vanke signed a cooperation framework agreement, according to the official announcement of the two parties:

The two sides will launch a number of in-depth cooperation around "Future Logistics, Future Cities". In the future, different types of venues including residential, commercial, office, etc. will likely see the presence of "Wan Xiaoxiao Hungry".

Earlier, Amazon established Amazon Robotics, specializing in the development of intelligent logistics products (warehousing robots, drones), for its own e-commerce services, domestic e-commerce giant JD.com also established the X division, and launched drones, delivery of unmanned vehicles and other types of intelligent logistics products. In the past two years, logistics giant SF Express has also received a lot of news on the opposite side of intelligent logistics.

Replacing delivery workers with robotic drones seems to have become a trend in the industry.

From e-commerce to logistics, this wind has also blown to the takeaway industry. In April this year, the US Dianping website Yelp’s takeaway network Eat24 began to cooperate with the start-up Marble to test the use of robots in the San Francisco community. According to media reports at the time, the robot was a takeaway car that could walk outdoors, similar in appearance to the famous express robot Starship, but larger in size.

Eat24 food delivery robot

In just a few months, Ele.me’s delivery robots have followed suit. In the field of intelligent logistics, Ele.me seems to be more organized and self-contained.

First of all, like the idea of self-sufficiency among large e-commerce companies, Ele.me also established the "Ele.meπ Division" as early as 2016, specializing in the "future logistics" strategy. The food delivery robot introduced above was developed by this division.

At the end of last month, Lei Feng.com reported the news of the Ele.me drone. The company first announced its own drone "E7" (Chinese name is "Wing") at the 2017 World Unmanned Systems Conference, which is the first project received by the division.

According to media reports at the time:

This drone is the third generation product developed internally by Ele.me. The maximum flight speed is 65 kilometers per hour, the maximum load is 6 kilograms, and the full load range is 20 kilometers. The takeaway box mounted on it is specially made of air column material, with a weight of only 485 grams. It is the lightest takeaway box of its kind in the world, but the volume can reach 20 liters.

After the report came out, some industry experts speculated that Ele.me may make a fuss about the delivery robot next. "Land and air integration" is a consistent routine for e-commerce companies in the layout of intelligent logistics. Now Ele.me and Shanghai Vanke have cooperated to land the robot project, which is also a solid determination to do intelligent logistics by itself. Lei Feng.com learned that this robot is currently only suitable for indoor delivery, so it is unknown whether Ele.me will launch a large outdoor robot similar to Yelp in the future.

No matter how many delivery robots Ele.me will release in the future, it seems that this complete set of robot delivery methods is currently no problem.

Not long ago, Ele.me 800 million knife to acquire Baidu takeaway, "digestion" of a competitor, but the catering O2O market did not stop competing, after the acquisition, the market entered the landscape of Ele.me and Meituan, the two are still fighting, win and lose.

No matter whether it is the e-commerce, logistics or takeaway industry, or the sentence, "The world’s martial arts are only fast and unbroken", for example, Lei Feng.com asked several JD.com users why they use JD.com, not because JD.com is better than Tmall, but because most self-operated companies can achieve "order today, arrival the next day", or even "order in the morning, arrival in the afternoon". To put it bluntly, "waiting" is a huge minus for the e-commerce experience.

Although there are differences between takeout and e-commerce, the essence is the same. Under the premise of similar quality and service, whoever is faster, more efficient, and more convenient has a better chance of winning.

Ele.me established the π business department. In addition to logistics hardware, it also launched a voice ordering system at the end of last month. According to Lei Feng.com’s morning news at the time:

The system can rely on intelligent voice devices to complete the ordering process through voice interaction to save ordering time; wake up the system, express intentions, purchase goods, confirm orders, and confirm payment. Through the voice ordering system, the ordering process can be completed in as few as 5 steps.

In the future, if this ordering system is connected to more mature intelligent logistics hardware equipment to form a closed loop, the efficiency can be imagined. Although it is still far from being completely separated from manual delivery, Ele.me’s current approach is still smooth sailing.

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