The Swiss postal service is testing robot mail delivery
Source: Starship
Switzerland has announced that its postal service, Swiss Post, will be testing robots, with the intention of eventually using them to help deliver mail, according to CNN Money.
Swiss Post will conduct tests on deliveries of food and medicine next month in three cities.
The six-wheeled bots are small, designed to travel on sidewalks, and are intended to supplement rather than replace postal workers. Built by Starship Technologies, they're already being tested in Britain and Germany, and they will also be introduced in Washington, DC, later this year.
The head of development programs and innovation at Swiss Post, Claudia Pletscher, emphasized that she does not envision the robots replacing human delivery in the near future. The trials aim to determine how robots could assist with package delivery, as well as to gauge how consumers would react to their presence on the streets.
Robots are becoming more common across many industries. Manufacturers are at the forefront of adopting enterprise robotics. Boston Consulting Group estimates that robots will complete around 25% of all tasks in the manufacturing sector by 2025.
The use of robots in healthcare has grown as well, with surgical robots performing hundreds of thousands of surgeries in 2015. BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, projects that 2.8 million enterprise robots will ship between 2016 and 2021.
Businesses throughout the world are increasingly using robots to automate portions of their workflow.
Traditionally, robots have been used primarily in manufacturing. But other industries including healthcare, shipping and logistics, food services, retail, hospitality, and more are starting to also use robots. For example, hospitals are using robots to assist in surgery, retail stores are testing robots to take inventory, and warehouses are using robots help sort packages.
John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence has compiled a detailed report on enterprise robotics that examines the rising use of robots across many industries. It examines top use cases, market leaders, growth drivers, potential for workforce automation, the top barriers, and includes market forecasts on shipments and investment in robots between 2015-2021.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
We expect enterprise robotic shipments to nearly triple between 2015-2021.
Manufacturing will continue to be the top adopter of robots. A recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey found 44% of US manufacturers and 66% of German manufacturers plan to install autonomous robots and assistance systems within the next five years.
Rising wages around the world is just one of the key reasons enterprises are beginning to leverage robotics.
Robots have the potential to displace jobs, meaning that while they might take some more labor intensive jobs they have the potential to create new jobs for working on robots.
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