The announcement underlines Amazon's changing priorities under new CEO Andy Jassy
Amazon.com Inc. has unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool designed to solve a major pain point in the rapid delivery industry: drivers rummaging through cluttered vans at every stop looking for packages.
The technology projects a green circle on packages to be delivered at each stop and a red shopping.
The tool, called Vision Assisted Package Retrieval and in development since 2020, will be deployed in 1,000 Amazon vans next year and will shorten the typical delivery route by about 30 minutes, the company said.
The tool uses computer vision technology originally developed in Amazon warehouses to identify products without the use of barcode scanners. The technology was adapted to the tight loading spaces of vans and integrated with delivery route navigation software.
“Deliveries will no longer have to spend time organizing packages by stops, reading labels or manually checking important identifying information such as a customer's name or address to ensure they receive the correct packages. have,” Amazon said in a press release. “They just have to look for VAPR's green light, grab it and go.”
The announcement underlines Amazon's shifting priorities under Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021. Bezos stunned the media with big announcements that looked far into the future, such as a fleet of autonomous delivery drones – a project still in its infancy. the testing phase more than a decade after he announced it.
Under Jassy, who guided the company through layoffs and halted dozens of groundbreaking projects, the focus is on short-term efforts to cut costs and make Amazon's low-margin e-commerce business more attractive to Wall Street investors concerned about tight profits.
The Seattle-based company relies on a network of small businesses that use 100,000 vans and employ 390,000 drivers to deliver packages. By shortening delivery times, Amazon can limit what it has to pay to these delivery service partners, who typically hire drivers who are paid by the hour.
Amazon has announced several other initiatives:
- AI Shopping Guides are designed to help customers research more than 100 product types, ranging from televisions and dog food to headphones and face creams.
- A next-generation fulfillment center in Shreveport, Louisiana, that uses artificial intelligence and robotics to help employees pick and pack orders.
- An expansion of same-day delivery of prescription drugs will bring supply to nearly half of the U.S. next year
(This story has not been edited by Our staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)