Barcelona startup invents package-delivering robot

Online shopping is designed to be streamlined and easy – that is of course, until it needs to be delivered to its final destination. This is when there’s potential for complications: what if the recipient is out of the house or unreachable? Barcelona startup Eliport wants to solve this problem with two solutions: a robot to deliver the package, and a ‘smart’ post-box to put it in.

But what would that actually look like? The box-like, sturdy-looking robot would travel the last “three to four kilometers,” according to the company, reaching “the final logistics point, through the pavements, the pedestrian zones, and when it arrives to your door, it can unload the package into this pre-installed trunk at your property,” explained Eliport cofounder Patrick Synge.

‘Last mile’ problems

Eliport was started just over a year ago to solve the “last mile delivery problem.” The ‘last mile,’ in the transport and delivery industry, means “taking packages from the final logistics point to your door,” said Synge.

And what are the current problems with this so-called last mile? There are “many,” explained Synge, including “inconvenience, high cost, damage, pollution, third party problems as well.” However, at Eliport they believe they’ve “designed a system which can help alleviate all of those problems.”

“You’ll never miss another delivery again”

One of the main issues this would solve would be coordinating to be there when the post arrives. A robot delivering parcels into this ‘smart postbox’ means that “you can be away, you can be asleep, you can be on holiday…whatever it is, you don’t have to be there to receive the package, so you’ll never miss another delivery again.”

Some of the other positive aspects are that, beyond customers receiving their packages without a hitch, the times deliveries take place at can also “completely change.” This, in turn, would allow congestion to be “reduced” and cars to be “taken off the roads.”

Jobs and labor

When it comes to jobs, Eliport explains that in their view, they “hope” this will “help bridge the gap between the manual labor that is going to be available in the years to come and the demand seen increasing – from e-commerce, especially – on this delivery cycle.”

Currently, the robot doesn’t yet operate autonomously, but Eliport aim to install their first pilot program at the end of 2019, and “hope to be rolling out in many more cities” by the year 2020. As far as when you can get packages delivered to “your door” in Barcelona, Synge believes that “realistically,” this could happen in 2021 – if not sooner, he said.