DPD France has announced that it is testing 10 Soly parcel routing robots at its Vémars depot in Ile-de-France. They are designed to sort and deliver small packages to shipping points within the depot.

In a statement by DPD, they said, ““They enable a reduction in both repetitive journeys for sorting operators as well as handling for delivery drivers. The drivers can then concentrate more on scheduling their delivery roadmap.”

Directed by routings given by QR codes, the robots should significantly improve the delivery and sorting process, while reducing human resources costs of a delivery company depot. The robots are made by the sorting automation specialist company Solystic, a subsidiary of US arms manufacturer Northrup Grumman.

Solystic is a major company in the automation of parcel and mail sorting systems and has a factory in Bourg les Valence, France that employs around 200 staff, as well as a software business in Bagneux.

DPD claim that if successful, this could help change the face of the delivery business. As with the drive to use drones and road based automated delivery trucks, the industry as a whole is seeking to automate the delivery process as far as possible to reduce costs and improve accuracy in the delivery process. Where automated delivery systems on public roads and in the air are some way off, there is still a lot of scope to automate systems within companies’ premises due to fewer regulations being in place to hamper their development. Indeed, it is in companies’ premises where developers can more safely test their systems in a real world environment and thereby take us one step closer to fully automated delivery processes with the bugs being found and rectified from on site use.