BEIJING (Reuters) -More than a thousand robots are set to join the delivery personnel ranks of Chinese behemoths Alibaba (NYSE:), Meituan and JD (NASDAQ:).com over the next year as the pandemic fuels demand for contactless services.

According to their executives, the companies expect more than 2000 robots in operation by 2022. That’s a significant increase of fourfold, aided by declining costs of robots.

Millions of Chinese couriers deliver packages at a cost of 3 Yuan ($0.47). But companies are exploring using drones, or robots that look like boxes on wheels since 2013, amid the labour shortage.

Beijing has also ordered firms to ensure rest periods https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-tells-delivery-ride-hailing-firms-better-protect-workers-2021-09-10 for couriers as they scramble to meet rising demand and deadlines.

XiaHuaxia, Meituan’s chief scientist, stated that “the COVID-19 Pandemic has provided a huge boost” to robot rollout plans.

It launched its robot service on February 20, 2020, when infection levels were higher in Beijing than planned.

Kong Qi from the chief scientist for JD.com, revealed that JD.com had also advanced its plans to launch its robotic service. The launch was planned for June 2020 in Beijing. However, it began to use the service in Wuhan after February when the Chinese capital was shut down.

We want people and cars to get along better, not vehicles replacing people. We will only replace the deliveries guy in the least interesting sections of his work, he stated.

    LIMITS VS BENEFITS

Still, human delivery personnel outnumber robots, which have limitations such as inability to climb stairs. Robots cannot be used on roads or at speed, so they are restricted to certain areas like schools and housing estates.

Robots tend to deliver packages rather than food, which are more time sensitive.

Zhang Ji (25 years old) said, “The efficiency of robots is lower in offices where people order lots of food and parcels. But the vehicle’s capability is limited.” She was picking up a package from an autonomous vehicle that had been delivered to her Beijing office.

However, robot advocates believe that they will have long-term benefits such as lower costs for last-mile delivery. Researchers at the University of Michigan said fully and partially automated vehicles could cut delivery costs by 10−40% in cities.

Alibaba claims that its last-mile logistics vehicle, which has shipped more than one million orders to over 200,000 customers as of September, said the company. There are currently 200 robotics in operation, with plans for 1,000 robots by March. The next three-year plan is to bring 10,000.

COSTS ARE DOWN

Costs of making robots are down, said Wang Gang, vice president at Alibaba who is in charge of autonomous driving, mainly due to lower prices of lidar sensors that help measure distances and render images around vehicles.

Alibaba and JD.com claimed that the price of their robots fell to below 250,000 Yuan ($38.662) per piece.

JD.com currently operates 200 robots. It plans to grow to around 1,000 by 2021.

Meituan estimates that its robots will cost around 400,000 yuan to make, compared with 600,000. Yuan for 2020.

Xia stated that Meituan will have a robot costing less than 200,000 yuan by 2025. This is the year when over 10,000 such robots will be mass-applied.

Meituan currently owns around 100 delivery robotics.

Other countries also have robot delivery firms. Russian’s Yandex (NASDAQ:) and online food-ordering company GrubHub (NYSE:) plan to start using driverless robots to deliver food on U.S. college campuses.

Pan Hongju, 28, a Beijing-based programmer said: “I hope robots are widely used soon because it will simplify our lives… it’ll also reduce face to face contact during the pandemic so that we can be more safe.”

($1 = 6.4662