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Robotic Small Package
Singulation (SPS)
Creating order from chaos
Traditionally, inducting packages or items
to a sortation system has been a manual
operation. It’s dull, repetitive and hard to
find people to do it. That is now changing.
ABB, together with a leading perception
company, has developed a robot-centric
solution that accurately and consistently
identifies each package, picking and placing
it on the induction conveyor, every hour
of every day. Creating order from chaos
one package at a time. It is just one of the
new robotic solutions for the warehousing,
distribution and order fulfillment market
from ABB. www.abb.com/robotics
introduction of the FedEx Extra Hours
program and the FedEx SameDay Bot,
an autonomous urban delivery vehicle, as
two examples.
FedEx Extra Hours enables retailers to
fulfill customer orders received in late-af-
ternoon/early-evening timeframes when
most online orders are placed. While
details can vary by retailer, “generally
speaking, next-day delivery via FedEx
Extra Hours is a shopping cart option
that is available when ordering online,”
said a FedEx spokesman. “If the retailer
offers FedEx ‘hold at location’ as a ship-
ping option, that location can be selected
from the shopping cart at the point of
purchase.”
“FedEx Extra Hours is a great example
of how we have changed to support brick-
and-mortar retail chains in their efforts to
fulfill from store[s],”
as retailers strive to
give shoppers a more
seamless physical and
digital buying expe-
rience, Harkins says.
“[It’s] a portfolio of
services that allows
retailers to acceler-
ate ‘click-to-deliv-
er’ times while also
[boosting] their
bottom line. By pro-
viding later pickup
times and utilizing
next-day local delivery, retailers can ful-
fill and deliver online purchases to their
shoppers faster than their competition,”
he notes.
FedEx Extra Hours is currently available in some 100 large U.S. markets where
retailers have requested the service, notes
the FedEx spokesman. The company says
the program will be expanded to more
cities based on customer interest.
For its part, the FedEx SameDay Bot
is being developed to “deliver on customer expectations of visibility, convenience, and speed, and answers the call
for innovation [in response to] the rise
in business-to-consumer shipping,” notes
Harkins.
FedEx plans to launch prototype pilot
testing of the bots this summer, pending
local government approvals. Test cities
with which FedEx is in discussions
include its hometown of Memphis,
Tenn., as well as Manchester, N.H.,
and Plano and Frisco, Texas.
FedEx has partnered with
Manchester-based Deka Research
and Development Corp. to design
and build the units, which are
designed for last-mile, same-day
delivery of orders such as pizzas,
prescriptions, auto parts, and other
small-lot goods. The prototype’s
roughly four-cubic-foot compart-
ment can accommodate a variety of
goods, including hot and cold items,
and the bot is being built with an
