Three embodied AI robots have become star performers at a postal center, joining the night-shift parcel-sorting line to ease the workload on human staff, in south China's tech hub of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province.
At the parcel-feeding zone of the postal center, the embodied AI robots pick up parcels of various sizes and shapes with ease, turn the shipping labels face-up, and place the parcels into the designated area with precision.
"[The robot] adopts an end-to-end model commonly used in embodied intelligence with a closed-loop system of 'perception-decision-execution.' As we can see, the robot has cameras mounted on its hands and head, which can identify the parcel's type, position, and status, and then feed the information back to the 'brain' to let the model make decisions. The model decides whether to pick and place with both hands or grasp with one hand, or to flip the parcel over, and finally carries out the action through its dexterous hands, placing the parcel onto the conveyor line," said Xu Chuan, vice-general manager of Iconvey Robotics (Shenzhen) Company, the manufacturer of the robots.
Beyond handling regular parcels, the three robot employees can also identify and separate parcels with unclear labels, damaged packaging, or irregular shapes, handing them over to human staff for separate processing.
"For example, cylindrical items like this are what we call irregular-shaped parcels. If you place them on the main conveyor line, they may roll, causing mis-delivery or loss. The robot identifies the irregular-shaped parcel through its cameras and use its 'brain' to make a decision to place it in the irregular-parcel area," Xu said.
Staff at the postal center said the robots are the star performers, each capable of sorting around 1,000 to 1,200 parcels per hour.
"It is really our star employee now. According to our statistics, its parcel-feeding accuracy reaches over 95 percent. Because we always work long night shifts with repetitive and high-intensity tasks, the robots really help to reduce our physical workload. During peak periods, they step right in, working alongside our human staff to handle the surge in volume," said Zeng Guodong, manager of Land Transport Mail Processing Center of China Post Shenzhen Postal District Center.
Embodied AI robots take over night-shift parcel sorting in China’s tech hub Shenzhen
