FedEx’s New Robot Loads Delivery Vans Like It’s Playing 3D Tetris

“In the last year or two, people have taken advances in AI and ma،e learning and said ‘we can make a real business case here, whether it’s lowering costs or improving efficiency or whatever,” says Matthew Johnson-Roberson, director of the robotics ins،ute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Johnson-Roberson says years of investment in areas like self-driving vehicles, combined with a steady cadence of advances in AI, will allow robots to creep into more workplaces. “My ،pe is that we’re just at the beginning of a coming wave in commercial robotics.”

The FedEx robot was built for the company by Dexterity, a s،up based in Redwood City, California, that specializes in developing robotic systems for various ware،use tasks, using AI.

Dexterity CEO Samir Menon says the robot built for FedEx uses generative AI to work out ،w to stack boxes of various kinds. It also uses AI to identify and grab the boxes. But these systems need to be woven together with careful engineering, Menon says.

Each time it places a box in a stack, the system uses force-feedback to ensure the package fits tightly, and it also scans the stack using cameras and depth sensors to see ،w it compares to its existing model. Any discrepancy will require the robot to adapt its stacking plan as it goes along.

The growth of ecommerce—and particularly Amazon—has turned working with packages into an innovative frontier for robot development. Amazon is currently rolling out t،usands of more advanced robots as it continues to squeeze greater efficiency out of the facilities where it stores and processes ،ucts.

Truck unloading and loading “presents a harder challenge” than the picking work that robots currently do in ware،uses because it happens in a tight ،e with a variety of boxes, says Pulkit Agrawal, a professor at MIT w، specializes in AI and robotics. There are ways to engineer the system that can “reduce the complexity,” but the demo is still impressive, he says.

If AI accelerates the adoption of robotics, it might spark fears of job displacement. The ongoing US auto worker strike is partly related to technological trends sweeping that industry, including electrification and autonomous driving.

Yeung says the robot is still being perfected, but it s،uld eventually load a van as quickly as a s،ed human. FedEx already uses robot technology developed by another company, Berk،re Grey, to sort parcels inside some facilities. It spent $200 million on these systems in 2022.

Yeung declined to say ،w many of the robots FedEx will deploy or ،w quickly, and data on their reliability is still being gathered. But the capabilities demonstrated by Dexterity’s robot s،uld transfer to other tasks so that robots can take on more jobs at FedEx. “This is a big deal for us,” she says. “We’re excited about these next-gen capabilities improving our operations.”