Amazon Supercharges Deliveries with AI-Driven Electric Vans

Amazon is revolutionizing package delivery by integrating its AI-powered Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR) into electric vans. The system significantly cuts delivery times and reduces driver effort, with early tests showing over 30 minutes saved per route and a 67% reduction in driver workload.

Amazon’s VAPR Revolutionizes Package Retrieval for Drivers

Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR) is an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by Amazon that helps delivery drivers find goods more quickly and with less effort. Could it be more AI VAPR-ware or a revolutionary device?

Among all the hoopla about Tesla's "We, Robot" event on October 10th, an artificial intelligence news release from Amazon got a little missed. It claims to make people's lives better right now, not in two years.

How VAPR Makes Deliveries Faster and Easier

By automatically detecting which Amazon parcels are due at a particular stop, VAPR makes the life of delivery drivers much easier.

Once the system determines which packages are going to be delivered at that stop, it will display a green "O" for those packages and a red "X" for the others. To make sure no parcels are forgotten, VAPR gives an auditory signal when the driver has picked up all the "right" ones.

As far as Electrek is concerned, the system should be able to say things like, “Good delivery driver, you found the thing! Who’s a good delivery driver? You’re a good delivery driver!”

Eliminating Manual Sorting and Label Checking

With the VAPR system, truckers can't make or receive phone calls while delivering packages.

This eliminates the need for Amazon's drivers to manually verify identifiers like a customer's name or address to make sure they have the correct items in between stops, organize packages by stops, or read labels, according to the company. Rather, they will just wait for the light to turn green, then take the products and run.

Field Tests Show Major Time Savings and Efficiency

According to the Amazon Transportation team, they have put their initial beliefs regarding VAPR's usefulness to the test by spending hundreds of hours doing field tests with their drivers. Early trials showed that Amazon drivers reported 67% less mental and physical exertion and over 30 minutes of time saved per route.

Scaling VAPR Across Amazon’s Global Fleet

As soon as 1,000 brand new electric delivery vehicles from Amazon will have VAPR fitted, with expansion plans in the works if the results hold.

With over 390,000 Amazon delivery drivers globally and over 100,000 vans in its fleet, Amazon delivers millions of products daily. Technology such as VAPR offers tremendous potential for time and effort savings on a massive scale.