The DHL Innovation Day took place on Thursday. It brought together a number of supply chain professionals, entrepreneurs and startups to “reimagine the future of tech in the industry”.

The logistics and express delivery firm used the Innovation Day to announce the winners of its Innovation Challenges.

US-based Vecna won the Robotics Challenge, while the UK-based parcel start-up Parcelly took home the prize in the Sharing Economy Challenge.

Finalists of the Robotics Challenge from the US< Singapore and Switzerland demonstrated their prototypes live. The robots built by the finalists were designed to navigate aa warehouse autonomously and to collect different boxes of varying size from shelves and to place them in carts. The winner was announced as the Piece Picking Robot from the US based Vecna. The Vecna team won €15,00 as well as a chance to work up a proof of concept design with DHL.
Finalists of the Sharing Economy Challenge also presented their solutions aimed at rethinking the status quo of access and ownership. Out of over 60 submissions from around the globe, Parcelly took first place with its platform that coordinates convenient package drop-offs at local businesses, along with immediate notification and flexible pick-up times.

“We are encouraged by DHL’s openness to logistics strategies that challenge conventional business models,” said Sebastian Steinhauser from Parcelly. “We are absolutely on board with adapting to customers’ changing needs by extending the capabilities at the first and last mile of the DHL network, allowing dynamic on-demand pick up and drop off.”

In a statement, Matthias Heutger, Senior Vice President DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation, commented: “The pivotal forces of digitalization and globalization are reshaping our world, and DHL is committed to facilitating innovation that prepares us for these changes.”
 
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