JD.com launches robot courier station in central China city

CHANGSHA, Nov. 22 -- China's e-commerce giant JD.com on Thursday launched its first robot courier station in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province.

The delivery station covering 600 square meters has a team of 20 robot couriers, serving customers within a range of 5 km from the station.

Liu Xiangdong, director of JD's autopilot center, said the robots can handle 2,000 deliveries a day.

JD has been promoting the use of robot couriers in a number of Chinese cities including Beijing.

The company said earlier this year that it has worked with Chinese robot maker Siasun to develop logistics robots and increase automation from order to delivery. It will renovate 800 logistics centers nationwide with AI technologies in the next five years.

"We look to establish an intelligent system covering storage, delivery vehicles, distribution stations, and customer service. In the future, human couriers will sit in the office and monitor machines that do the jobs for them," Liu Qiangdong, founder of the e-commerce company.

All the robots in the Changsha station have an autopilot, and can move at 15-20 km per hour.

Each robot is a moving cargo tank with 22 package slots. It can distinguish customers through facial recognition or passwords.