Amazon is reportedly developing'humanoid' robots to pop out of delivery vans to deliver packages, eventually replacing the work of delivery drivers. Amazon is reportedly developing'humanoid' robots to pop out of delivery vans to deliver packages, eventually replacing the work of delivery drivers. O ne of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don't need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon's hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.

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Amazon is reportedly installing AI-powered cameras in delivery vans to keep tabs on its drivers in the UK. The technology was first deployed, with numerous errors that reportedly denied drivers' bonuses after malfunctions, in the US. Last year, the internet giant produced a corporate video detailing how the cameras monitor drivers' driving behavior for safety reasons. The same system is now apparently being rolled out to vehicles in the UK. Multiple camera lenses are placed under the front mirror.

You could soon see self-driving buses and delivery vans on UK roads as the government launches a £40m ($50m) competition to bring this technology to the market. The funding to kick-start commercial self-driving services, such as delivery vehicles and passenger shuttles, will help bring together companies and investors so that sustainable business models to be rolled out nationally and exported globally. The Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility competition will provide grants to help roll out commercial use self-driving vehicles across the UK from 2025. Types of self-driving vehicles that could be deployed include delivery vans, passenger buses, shuttles and pods, as well as vehicles that move people and luggage at airports and containers at shipping ports. The competition aims to unlock a new industry that could be worth £42bn to the UK economy by 2035, potentially creating 38,000 new skilled jobs.

Amazon may soon employ a little robotic helper to assist with delivering packages from vans to a customer's drop-off destination. The firm was awarded a patent earlier this month entitled, 'Directing secondary delivery vehicles using primary delivery vehicles,' which describes its delivery van bringing packages to a customer's drop-off destination and a smaller vehicle carrying it the rest of the way. The van, or primary vehicle, would feature new technology that creates the best path for a small autonomous vehicle, which is then programmed with instructions to travel from the cargo area of the truck to the customer's doorstep. The secondary vehicle would also be equipped with cameras and navigational gear, such as sensors and accelerometers, allowing it to send images and data back to the primary vehicle during its journey. Amazon filed the patent on January 6, 2020, with patent images that show the delivery van traveling to its destinations with packages and the secondary vehicle stowed away in the cargo area.

Amazon is well-known for its technological Taylorism: using digital sensors to monitor and control the activity of its workers in the name of efficiency. But after installing machine learning-powered surveillance cameras in its delivery vans earlier this year, the company is now telling employees: agree to be surveilled by AI or lose your job. As first reported by Vice, Amazon delivery drivers in the US now have to sign "biometric consent" forms to continue working for the retailing giant. Exactly what information is being collected seems to vary based on what surveillance equipment has been installed in any given van, but Amazon's privacy policy (embedded below) covers a wide range of data. The data that drivers must consent to be collected includes photographs used to verify their identity; vehicle location and movements (including "miles driven, speed, acceleration, braking, turns, following distance"); "potential traffic violations" (like speeding, failure to stop at stop signs, and undone seatbelts); and "potentially risky driver behavior, such as distracted driving or drowsy driving."

Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automotive are extending their four-year-old partnership to include commercial vans. On Wednesday, the companies announced a plan to jointly develop an autonomous delivery van based on FCA's Ram ProMaster. Waymo, the self-driving division of Google parent Alphabet, announced back in 2016 that FCA would be its first OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partner. Since then, the two companies have worked together to retrofit a fleet of hundreds of Chrysler Pacifica minivans with Waymo's self-driving hardware and software. Now, the companies will work together on a new project -- an autonomous delivery van -- in the service of Waymo's nascent delivery service, Waymo Via.

A new study has found that using delivery drones in dense urban environments might actually consume more energy than a conventional delivery van. Thomas Kirschstein, an economist at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, developed a simulation to compare how energy efficient different delivery methods would be in a large and crowded city. He compared a delivery drone, electric van, and diesel van as they traveled through a digital recreation of Berlin to see which required the least amount of fossil fuel to complete equivalent delivery routes. The clear winner were electric vans, which consumed more than 50 percent less energy than diesel vans. The biggest surprise, however, came from drones, which turned out to be the most energy hungry of all the delivery methods, consuming as much as 10 times the amount of energy that the electric vans did.

A decade ago, the British department-store chain John Lewis built itself a long warehouse, painted in gradations of sky blue. The shed, as it is called in the industry, cost £100m and covered 650,000 sq ft. Windsor Castle could easily fit inside it. John Lewis named the shed Magna Park 1, after the site where it stands: a "logistics campus" of warehouses, roads, shipping containers and truck bays east of Milton Keynes. Magna Park 1 was intended to supply the company's stores around southern England, but almost as soon as it was finished, John Lewis realised that it wasn't enough. The pace of e-commerce was flying, and Magna Park 1 opened in the midst of a spell in which, between 2006 and 2016, the share of John Lewis deliveries going direct to customers rose 12-fold. So John Lewis built Magna Park 2, measuring 675,000 sq ft. After that, the company realised it needed a new shed for Waitrose, its supermarket chain, where home deliveries were skyrocketing, too. "It became a bit of a standing joke," said Philip Stanway, a regional director at Chetwoods, the architecture firm that designed and built all these facilities. "They used to come to meetings with their forecasts, and they'd say: 'Screw this. This is the new forecast,'" Stanway said, making a scribbling motion in the manner of a John Lewis executive hastily updating the numbers. "We couldn't build the buildings quick enough for them."

When the self-driving delivery vans finally arrive, it's going to be a challenge getting packages from the vehicle to the doorstep. That's where Ford's partnership with Digit – a bipedal robot from Agility Robotics – comes in handy. The main problem is that watching a two-legged robot like Digit can be creepy and disconcerting, especially when it awkwardly walks on its creature-like legs and then bends over – or when it sneakily unfolds itself from the back of the delivery van. Ford plans to use Digit to carry packages up to 40 pounds when humans aren't around to help grab deliveries from the back of a truck or van. Digit can walk up and down stairs, navigate around obstacles in its path, and stay balanced even after getting bumped. The humanoid can also fold up, so it stows away in the back of the delivery van ready to unfold and carry packages once the van arrives.