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In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is considerable interest in reducing human contact in last-mile delivery problems, such as food and grocery deliveries. Abuilding-to-building delivery system for the UT Austin campus using robots that will improve contactless deliveries and save people time.

0. Background

The cost of express delivery in the United States is huge, one problem is that thescattered distribution of households and the courier will get lost sometimes. But with robots that are pre-set with the regular routes, the time and labor costs can be reduced greatly.

On the other hand, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a trend that more people are working from home now.Thus they are increasinglyonscious of the inability of the traditional "person-to-person" freightmode to prevent the spread of the epidemic when faced with suddeninfectious diseases.

1. Research

1.1- Secondary research

The use of autonomous machines to solve logistics problems has been a focus in the commercial sector in recentyears. Autonomous machines are now involved in nearly every stage of the supply chain. While these primarily focus on business-to-business interactions, there is a growing push for autonomous robots in the space of business-to-customer interaction, particularly last-mile delivery which presents unique challenges.

1.2- Competitors Analysis

1.3- Persona

Research Findings—pain points

  • Huge time waste on finding the location for food & grocerycourier
  • Require a lot of labor force increasing the cost of user and restaurant
  • Huge market need for delivery during the work from home time

2. Ideate

2.1- POV Statements

I referred back to my user research, think what would the user need for the robot delivery platform, and then list out the POV statements.

2.2- Robot Platform

Intricate system architecture streamlines communication between the customer and various types of robots.

2.3- Robot Features & Charging Station

Intricate system architecture streamlines communication between the customer and various types of robots.

In order to reduce the difficulties for users to find the robot, we set the exact coordinates of each building inside UT campus, and put a designed sign to mark the place for robot.

2.4- SMADS Sign Design

2.5- Story Board

3. Define

3.1- Information Architecture

3.2- Low-Fidelity Wireframes

4. Design

5. Implementing

▲ User testing with UT's president

Through the usibility testing and iteration 1 test of our project, we found there are some palces could be improved. And for our next step, we will launch our platform online and start to makeprofits.

Demo

To be Improved:

  • Make the robots more visual design with our color theme and logo
  • People can't open the package box without a verification code
  • Cooperate with more shops to serve better service likepharmacystores
  • Use bluetooth to connect when it isworking inside the building