How robots would help the Post Office -- GCN

Congress should pass reform legislation that would establish a Technology Innovation Fund for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to enable robotic last-mile postal delivery, a new report states. "Of particular promise are sorting and delivery robots, which could sort mail, including into local delivery orders, deliver mail to homes, or both," according to "A New Vision for Postal Reform in the E-commerce Age," a Feb. 11 report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). "One could imagine a postal worker driving to particular routes with a fleet of 10 or so robots, letting each one off to'walk' a particular mail route, and then picking them back up at the end of the route." This funding would help support innovation at USPS, the report states, likening the approach to those at the Defense Department and NASA, which get federal funding for automation and robotics research. Although robotics is not sophisticated or inexpensive enough yet to sort and deliver mail, progress is happening.