(Unmanned delivery vehicle borrowed by Zidan Source: Photo provided by the interviewee)
The author | Ao Dun
Edited | Shi Ding
Chen Xiang and Zi Dan live together in a community on Yushan Road in Pudong New Area, and due to the epidemic and an unmanned delivery vehicle, the two strangers met and became "comrades-in-arms".
On the afternoon of April 20, Chen Xiang, who was delivering the fourth batch of guaranteed supplies, took a photo: a black and white unmanned delivery vehicle with two layers of cartons on it, and more than 50 boxes of goods waiting for delivery behind the car. Behind the goods are 35 buildings in the community, and nearly 1600 households.
This black and white unmanned delivery truck was borrowed by Zi Dan. Five days ago, on April 15, seeing that the neighbors in the same community "donated a driverless express car", Zidan also wanted to do something and immediately sent a circle of friends. On April 16, her friend shipped an unmanned delivery truck that "would find a parking space by herself and identify the location of the building by herself." Chen Xiang, a volunteer of "no teacher and no teacher", became Zi Dan's partner and also became the operator of the unmanned delivery vehicle.
As a community volunteer and Tuanjiang Ling in Xuhui District, she was not so lucky. She lives in an old neighborhood with 80 buildings. If the group purchase and the materials distributed by the government arrive on the same day, relying on the supermarket trolley to transport the goods, at the end of the day, the strong male volunteers will also be "tired and paralyzed". What Jiang Ling didn't know was that in the first half of April, Chen Xiang's cart was even more pitiful, it was a two-wheeled cart with a large wooden plank. Today's unmanned delivery vehicles "save physical strength, and neighbors feel fresh," Mr. Chen said.
At the end of March in Shanghai, the unmanned delivery team seemed to have pressed the "emergency call" button, and hundreds of unmanned delivery vehicles from Meituan, JD Logistics, White Rhino and other enterprises "quietly" entered different communities and cabin hospitals in Shanghai to join the "last 100 meters" logistics and distribution relay race. For hundreds of unmanned delivery vehicles, this is the key battle to make "dreams shine into reality", but reality is far more complex and magical than imagined.
People and cars "囧途": cars are afraid of getting lost, people are afraid of drinking water
This is the seventh time that Meituan's automatic delivery vehicles have supported the epidemic. At 5 p.m. on April 2, 31 operators set off from Beijing and landed in Shanghai, and there was still a heavy task waiting for them to complete that night. A team of trucks carrying dozens of Meituan autonomous delivery trucks is on the Beijing-Shanghai highway, which was scheduled to arrive in the early hours of April 3.
You Guodong, a safety officer of the Meituan automatic delivery vehicle test, was a member of the pick-up team that night, and when there was still no team news until 12 o'clock, he set 4 alarm clocks to sleep. Until seven o'clock in the morning, You Guodong could not wait for the pick-up notice. Later, it was learned that because of the pass problem, the automatic delivery truck arrived at the agreed place in the early morning of the 4th. At this time, the You Guodong detachment was already on duty to transport goods in the Kangqiao Peninsula community, and could only change other groups to pick up the car.
(Meituan automatic delivery truck on the way from Beijing to Shanghai Source: Photo provided by the interviewee)
After coming to Shanghai, the operation and maintenance team needs to debug the automatic vehicle in advance, be familiar with the road conditions near the community, and at the same time need to dock the route with the community staff to ensure that the vehicle is not lost in the community. Because the order volume during the epidemic period is dozens of times more than usual, the Meituan automatic delivery vehicle team is divided into five teams and adopts a 'wheel war' method, people can rest, and cars and tasks cannot be stopped.
With the intensification of the epidemic, the safety, eating, living and traveling of 32 operation and maintenance personnel have gradually increased. Lei Yan, the regional safety leader of the Meituan autonomous delivery vehicle, is tasked with solving these problems, but in the special period, as large as a protective suit and as small as a marker pen have become a problem.
On April 2, Lei Yan and the Beijing operation and maintenance team arrived in Shanghai almost at the same time, in addition to uploading everyone's nucleic acid testing and antigen test results every day, he also had to apply for or buy protective clothing, sanitize materials and food and other necessities. "The hotel does not provide any breakfast, our operation and maintenance staff have to go out very early every day, it is a day, and it will be very tiring not to eat in the morning." Lei Yan said that the weather in Shanghai is gradually sweltering, and colleagues on the front line wear gloves on their hands, and when they take off their gloves, their hands are like pickled pepper chicken feet, which are all pleats.
The weather in Shanghai was hot and cold, and the "whites" who were tightly wrapped in protective clothing were wet and wet, and the most difficult thing was that the operation and maintenance personnel were afraid of sweating and did not dare to drink water, nor was it convenient to go to the toilet. Lei Yan remembered that a colleague had gout on the third day of coming, "did not dare to drink water, uric acid jumped particularly high, every day the leg pain is not good, but also insisted on the front line."
On April 1, the day before the Meituan autonomous delivery vehicle operation and maintenance team arrived in Shanghai, Shanghai officially implemented the pudong and puxi blocking measures in batches, which are bounded by the Huangpu River. After Puxi was officially sealed, Yang Shuo, an employee of Yijia Zhiche who lived in Jiading Yunxiang Jiayuan Community, officially took on the responsibility of transporting the "last 100 meters" of the community.
Unlike other regions, Yang Shuo is not only the operation and maintenance staff of two JD Logistics intelligent express trucks, but also a volunteer in the community, providing "one-stop service from loading, unloading to delivery". After receiving the task, he transferred two vehicles from the company of Nanxiang Economic City, collected maps and planned routes two days ago, and successfully started delivery on the third day.
Yijia Zhiche is the chassis supplier of Jingdong Logistics intelligent express vehicles, and the company's anti-epidemic support person recalled that before Puxi sealing, Yijia Zhiche and Jingdong Logistics jointly discussed and decided to shop cars and shop people, regardless of cost to solve the terminal logistics problem.
On March 28, the intelligent express truck urgently dispatched by JD Logistics arrived in Shanghai Pudong New Area. On April 12, JD Logistics urgently dispatched more than 50 intelligent express delivery trucks from Changshu to Shanghai in batches. The head of operation of the intelligent driving department of Jingdong Logistics said that Jingdong Logistics has allocated more than 100 intelligent express delivery vehicles to reinforce Shanghai, including technology, operation, products and other fields, more than 100 people have invested in this work.
On Sunday, April 10, two days ago, 107 Yonghui Baofu employees who brought their own dry food and epidemic prevention materials flew from Fuzhou to Shanghai, where they would arrive at Yonghui Supermarket's closed-loop management warehouse in Yuepu, Baoshan, to pick up and pack goods. Some of the daily necessities sent from here to many communities in Shanghai will be transported by the white rhino unmanned delivery truck for the last three kilometers.
Delivery in the "Eye of the Storm" of the epidemic, unmanned vehicles still can't do "unmanned"
Just as people dress differently, these driverless delivery vehicles also have a distinct color logo. They are thrown to Shanghai from all directions, and scattered into large and small communities and hospitals, ready to call every second.
The Meituan automatic delivery truck is affectionately known as the "little yellow car" by the residents of the community, and the body shape looks round, and people call it "Iron Han". The "Little Yellow Car" landed in nearly 10 communities such as Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, Fudan University, Putuo District Fanggang Hospital, Oasis Kangcheng and Kangqiao Peninsula.
(Source: Courtesy of the interviewee)
After entering the daily work, You Guodong and other operation and maintenance personnel first load the materials from the store where Meituan buys vegetables to the automatic delivery truck, and then send them to the gate of the community or the door of the building. He remembers that in the early days, they transported goods near the Kangqiao Peninsula community, the vegetable station was empty in seconds, and the operation and maintenance team had to "run" to sort orders, load and unload goods, and hand over the goods to the volunteers as quickly as possible, so that the volunteers could deliver them to the residents.
On April 11, a small team of Meituan group came to the Renheng Riverside City Community in Pudong, which has 70 buildings, the lowest building is 25 floors, and it is inhabited by nearly 15,000 people. The security guard told You Guodong that this is the community with the largest positive ratio in the whole of Pudong, and he feels that he has come to the "center of the storm".
On the afternoon of the same day, meituan's 8 "small yellow cars" began to learn to survey the community and find the location of charging piles. The community security guard took the car and told them that there were several buildings in front of them, and the vehicle outlined the map to complete the map collection work. You Guodong recalled that walking on the community trail, the scenery was particularly beautiful, the trees were high and dense, "but there was no one, only the big white."
The highest temperature in Shanghai reached 36 degrees that day, and there were confirmed cases in almost every building in Yanlord Riverside City. Community volunteers told You Guodong that he changed at least three sets of protective clothing a day, because the protective clothing was wet and polluted, and there would be scratching and damage during the handling process, and he had to change it. In addition, eating is a big problem, and you also need to take off your protective clothing, for fear that the virus will contaminate your clothes and then pass it on to volunteers and others.
Protective clothing and "little yellow cars" need to be strictly sanitize. The US group divided three barrels of alcohol into each group, about 5 pounds, and the You Guodong group used up in two days, "or save the use, try to save." He said that after coming to Yanlord Riverside City, he felt that the Kangcheng Peninsula community was already very relaxed.
Unlike the "little yellow car", the "little red car" of Jingdong Logistics is in direct contrast with the greenery of spring, and the volunteers in the community can recognize it slowly coming from a long distance. After officially teaming up with the "Little Red Car" of Jingdong Logistics on April 3, Yang Shuo was responsible for putting the goods at the entrance of the community on the unmanned delivery truck, and then followed the car to the doorbell of each building to let the residents come down to pick up the goods.
(Source: Courtesy of the interviewee)
In daily operations, Jingdong Logistics's "Little Red Car" delivery of goods requires users to scan the code to pick up the goods. However, during the epidemic period, this vehicle is responsible for carrying the goods on the various platforms on the shelves at the door, and if it encounters an order that cannot obtain a mobile phone number, it can only take a temporary method and deliver according to the corresponding address.
According to statistics, Yang Shuo delivers about 100 goods every day. In the early days, if some residents could not hear the doorbell, he could only send it again on the next trip to try, but later each building had a WeChat group, and Yang Shuo sent a notice in the group before each departure to let everyone go downstairs in time to pick up the goods.
According to the local epidemic prevention situation in Shanghai, nearly 100 intelligent express delivery vehicles of Jingdong Logistics are mainly invested in closed communities and square cabin hospitals. The person in charge of the operation of the intelligent driving department of Jingdong Logistics said that the closed community and the square cabin hospital are mainly different in the size of the distribution range and the complexity of the road, and the scope of community distribution is larger, the road complexity is higher, and the difficulty of map collection is also higher.
In order to let the intelligent express car adapt to the new environment and new tasks as soon as possible, the local e-coffee smart car in Shanghai urgently gathered volunteers to join the "Little Red Car" distribution team of Hejingdong Logistics on the eve of puxi sealing control.
The person in charge of the above-mentioned Yijia Zhiche recalled that several volunteers in Shanghai at more than 30 degrees happened to be in a suite with other positive volunteers, and they were worried that they would not be infected, "because we could not support, we could only rely on themselves to break out the energy to solve all the problems."
Zero-touch opportunities: from "novice" to "veteran"
Unmanned delivery vehicles such as "Little Yellow Car", "Little Red Car" and White Rhino are not the first time to join the fight against the epidemic. Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, they have traveled to major cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and are now "veterans" who have experienced hundreds of battles.
However, the epidemic situation in Shanghai is special, and the places served by unmanned delivery vehicles are mainly in the sealed area, which requires more special support work.
Lei Yan recalled that before the "little yellow car" of the US group entered the closed operation sites such as campuses and hospitals, it would fully communicate with the school, the hospital and community volunteers, and spend about thirty minutes to train the relevant personnel, teaching them basic actions such as daily operation, charging, and maintenance of the vehicle, "because the vehicle will not come out in the short term after it goes in."
In addition to the technical support of the vehicle after landing, there will also be technical support personnel in the cloud to monitor the safety of the vehicle at any time. In the "little yellow car" automatic driving, the Meituan cloud control platform will have someone to carry out real-time safety monitoring, and if there is a demand in the front-line closed site, human-computer interaction assistance can be carried out at any time.
Speaking of "human-computer interaction", Lei Yan said that he saw a photo from Fudan University and instantly broke the defense. On April 12, it rained heavily that night, and the "little yellow car" carried the students' meals on the campus, followed by Fudan University volunteers with discounted umbrellas, and the back of the car was lit up with "Fudan University refueling".
The electronic screen behind the "little yellow car" was not originally these words. During the day on the 12th, Fudan University students put forward this small demand and wanted to cheer up the students. After receiving the demand, Lei Yan and they urgently pulled a group, which included meituan technicians, fudan university volunteer students and teachers, more than 20 people. After an hour and a half of "air cooperation", at 9:30 p.m., "Fudan University Refueling" finally appeared behind the small yellow car.
In order to be infinitely close to zero contact, before the trip to Shanghai, the "little yellow car" underwent another iteration, opening the hatch through road recognition during autonomous driving, and at the same time being able to voice remind to complete part of the work.
"Small groups, small groups open the hatch." After hearing the instruction, the unmanned delivery truck will automatically open the hatch, and the volunteers can take the meal to the volunteer at the entrance of the building. "Small groups, small groups close the hatch." Sometimes when both hands need to pick up meals or when there are more and heavier items, volunteers can close the hatch by voice, achieving zero contact.
Lei Yan recalled that from the beginning of 2020 to the present, the "little yellow car" has supported the fight against the epidemic seven times in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Xiamen and other cities, and the anti-epidemic work has also had a systematic standard process. But because of the heavy daily tasks during the epidemic in Shanghai, although more vehicles and people have been dispatched, new challenges will continue to emerge.
"Volunteers aren't as distributed as they used to be, so it's a new venture." We delivered from the community gate to the downstairs, and volunteers picked up supplies under each building, without the need for volunteers to load the car from the beginning, follow in and then carry it upstairs. Greatly reduce the time and energy consumed by volunteers in the middle of the distribution. Lei Yan said that as of April 28, meituan's automatic delivery vehicles had accumulated more than 280,000 orders in Shanghai's anti-epidemic supply, equivalent to the delivery capacity of about 300 volunteers.
Similarly, the fifth-generation intelligent express delivery car put into use by JD Logistics this time has also been comprehensively upgraded in terms of intelligence, efficiency and stability. In terms of intelligence, the vehicle realizes functions such as remote switching on and off, remote remote control, remote monitoring, etc., and the background can grasp the status of the vehicle at all times and effectively intervene in the vehicle at critical moments.
In view of the special situation of the epidemic, a group of "little red cars" have increased the volume of cargo boxes and the number of lattices without increasing the volume of vehicles, and at the same time realized the flexible splitting and combination of lattices on the basis of standardized containers, effectively improving the capacity and flexibility of single vehicles. The speed has also been increased from 3m/s to 5m/s, which greatly improves the delivery time.
From the perspective of scene application, after 2 years of model exploration, Jingdong's "Little Red Car" has added a short barge mode in terms of terminal distribution. For some long-distance road areas, there is no need for the courier brother to pick up the goods to and from the station, and the intelligent courier truck can short-haul the goods to the brother's side. At the same time, the cargo boxes of various grids can be replaced instantly according to different scene changes.
Yang Shuo initially got a small grid container truck, which could only pull a dozen pieces at a time, and later changed to a large grid car after coordinating with the company, and the efficiency was increased by two or three times. Every time the goods are delivered to the hands of residents and hears them say "thank you", Yang Shuo feels that it is very meaningful to do this thing, "using more advanced tools to liberate manpower and do something more meaningful."