Meituan takes new step on unmanned deliveries

The nation's largest on-demand service provider Meituan launched an open platform for autonomous delivery on Wednesday to accelerate the application and commercialization of autonomous technologies in its online delivery business.

The open platform will combine the efforts of leading autonomous technology and related component companies including robot maker Segway and autonomous driving company AutoX, as well as universities and research institutes, to jointly develop technologies needed for unmanned delivery vehicles.

"Autonomous delivery is never easy. We hope to improve efficiency and accelerate the landing of unmanned delivery through joint efforts of different partners on the open platform," said Wang Huiwen, co-founder and senior deputy president of Meituan.

Meituan, a group buying and dining platform with 320 million active users and more than 4 million merchants, has already started trial operations of autonomous delivery in a shopping mall, office building and university campus.

Meituan already handles more than 1,000 online food orders per day using the technology at a university campus in Shanghai.

The Beijing-based company said it will start large-scale operations of its driverless delivery vehicles by 2019.

"Meituan's entry into autonomous delivery is a way of bolstering its competitiveness as emerging technologies including unmanned delivery will be the core engine driving its businesses in the future," said Yang Xu, an analyst on life and services from consultancy Analysys.

Right now, many companies including e-commerce giant JD are developing autonomous delivery technologies. However, Yang noted that the commercialization of autonomous delivery remains a long way off.

Before this can be achieved, a number of problems including complicated road conditions, technological bottlenecks, operating costs and supervision need to be dealt with, said Yang.

"In addition, related rules and regulations have yet to be issued," added Yang.

Xia Huaxia, head of autonomous delivery at Meituan, said that its service would continue to rely on its delivery staff to some extent for quite some time into the foreseeable future.

"Currently, autonomous vehicles will act as a supplement to our delivery staff, especially in late-night delivery, as unmanned vehicles can work round-the-clock," he added.