Embodiment design of a grocery delivery robot: From cool transport to user-friendly hand-over

Embodiment design of a grocery delivery robot: From cool transport to user-friendly hand-over

Geitenbeek, Romy (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering; TU Delft Design for Sustainability)

Rusak, Z. (mentor)
Vroon, Jered (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

2021-07-01

Last mile delivery is often seen as bottleneck for delivery service growth: it is the most costly and highest polluting segment of the delivery supply chain. By integrating delivery robots in society, last mile delivery can be automatize to create a more cost and time efficient and sustainable delivery service. This also applies to the grocery delivery service. However, no grocery delivery robot, that can operate on the sidewalk, is designed yet. How should such a grocery delivery robot look like? And how do we want the delivery robot to interact with the user?
This thesis provides an embodiment design for a grocery delivery robot, with the focus on the human-robot interaction at the doorstep. A desired human-robot interaction can be achieved by creating functional, ergonomic, intuitive, functionally looking, trustworthy, aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly design that will empower the customer to feel in control of the delivery process. To realize a functioning delivery robot, a prototype and design has been created according to a form follows function approach. A prototype of the embodiment design has been integrated with the Husky platform at the AMS Institute in Amsterdam to test and validate the human-robot interaction.
The design enables, a cool, temperature-controlled delivery with user-friendly hand-over. The user-friendly hand-over is envisioned by an automatic vertical crate hand-over movement, which mimics the current almost effortless interaction of retrieving crates from a grocery delivery service. This hand-over will to not only make the experience of retrieving groceries more joyful and ergonomic, but it will also enable a better future integration with entire delivery process. Last mile delivery will only be more efficient, sustainable, and able to offer customers more control of the delivery process, if the delivery robots are integrated within the entire delivery process.

Delivery robot
Embodiment design
User-friendly
User experience
Robotics

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fb58d588-1a70-4230-bb98-2b9c2827e4ba

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Romy Geitenbeek