The US Postal Service Is Working on Self-Driving Mail Trucks

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds--and if the United States Postal Service has its way, the robots won't stop them, either. Yes, the agency you know best for bringing you junk mail addressed to whomever lived in your apartment before you has caught robofever. It plans to put semiautonomous mail trucks into service in just seven years, and it seems to think it can pull off a shift away from human driving without shedding mail carrier jobs. That's all according to the postal service's Office of the Inspector General, which oversees the agency and last week released a report on its plans to work autonomy into its 228,000-vehicle fleet. Those plans are already in motion: The post office has partnered with the University of Michigan to build what it's calling an Autonomous Rural Delivery Vehicle, which it wants to launch on 28,000 rural routes nationwide as early as 2025.