One
emerging technology that has been getting a lot of hype in the past
few years is the self-driving car.
Not
long ago driver-less
cars seemed more something taken from a science fiction movie than a
reality, but in the year 2016 as a result of increasing
sophistication of computer navigation, GPS technology and camera
technology, driver-less
cars are a reality and multi million dollar companies like Google or Apple have been investing in the development of the technology that
will send the majority of car and truck drivers to the dole office.
The
logistics industry will probably be one of the first training grounds
for such automated vehicles and shipping companies will probably
adopt the technology faster than other industries.
But
have you ever wondered what will be the impact of driver-less
cars and trucks on the logistics field in general? Below you can see
a few aspects that most defiantly will be affected:
- Safety:
Improved safety driven by a reduction in human errors
- Lower
environment impact: Driven by fewer vehicles on the road and more
efficient fuel consumption
- Higher
efficiency: By allowing trucks to travel 24/7 without requiring rest
time
- Warehousing
operations: through technology like autonomous loading, auto pallet
movers and assisted order picking (we talk about this in another
post that you can read here)
- Last
mile delivery
- Reduce
drive shortage in the trucking industry:
- Costs
savings: Some of them include: labor costs through the reduction of
drivers, fuel consumption through a more efficient drive, vehicle
utilization and insurance cost.
If
you want to go in depth, I’d recommend you to read the below report
by DHL that really go into detail:
DHL driver less cars report
DHL driver less cars report
And
for those still reluctant to believe that this is coming, and I can
tell you it’s coming soon, watch out!
