Amazon drivers will no longer have to sift through a van full of cargo on the hunt for the right package thanks to a new AI-driven solution.
The company this week announced plans to roll out Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR)—a tool that allows drivers to quickly organize their deliveries without reading labels or manually checking packages—across 1,000 of its Rivian electric delivery vehicles by early next year.
According to Amazon, the task of searching for packages at each stop amounts to a significant time suck for drivers tasked with delivering goods to more than 100 customers each day. Four years ago, a team within Amazon’s transportation arm began exploring the idea of employing AI as a means of helping drivers dispense with the more tedious parts of their jobs.
“We had to think about factors that are unique to the delivery experience, such as lighting and space constraints inside vans,” said John Colucci, product manager at Amazon Transportation.
Here’s how the technology works: once a van arrives at a customer’s home or other delivery location, the VAPR module housed in the van processes its surroundings, picking up on multiple barcodes on packages in real time. Using Amazon’s proprietary computer vision technology, originally developed for use in its fulfillment centers, VAPR projects a green “O” onto all packages that will be delivered at the stop and a red “X” on those destined for other customers. The tech also provides an audio cue letting the driver know it’s found the right parcels even before they enter the cargo hold.
Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR) technology in an Amazon delivery truck.
Courtesy of Amazon
According to Amazon, the technology was built by training machine learning models to identify different labels and types of packages across environments with different lighting conditions. VAPR was specifically optimized for the dimly-lit interior of a van’s cargo space, and it is enhanced by newly designed automotive light projectors and cameras that are integrated into the vehicle’s navigation system. As such, it negates the need for drivers to use a mobile scanning device throughout the process.
A Bloomfield Logistics driver in Boston, Mass. who tested the technology said VAPR cut the time it takes to empty a tote and organize packages for his next stop down to about one minute from a previous average of two to five minutes. Another driver testified to the technology’s accuracy, saying it “always finds the right packages.”
VAPR was tested over the course of “hundreds of hours in the field” with delivery service providers, according to Amazon, and the Amazon Transportation team said it saved drivers an average of over 30 minutes per route.
While the company will initially roll out the technology with a small fraction of its 100,000-van fleet, it said it plans to continue to develop and scale such tech-enabled solutions across its delivery network.
