Autonomous Last-mile Delivery Vehicles in Complex Traffic Environments

TL;DR

This paper discusses JD.com's autonomous last-mile delivery vehicles in complex Chinese traffic, highlighting their technical solutions, safety strategies, and extensive real-world testing results in challenging environments.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive technical framework and safety strategies for autonomous delivery vehicles operating in complex traffic conditions in China.

Findings

Over 300 vehicles deployed in real-world trials

Accumulated over 715,819 miles of testing

Millions of hours of on-road testing

Abstract

E-commerce has evolved with the digital technology revolution over the years. Last-mile logistics service contributes a significant part of the e-commerce experience. In contrast to the traditional last-mile logistics services, smart logistics service with autonomous driving technologies provides a promising solution to reduce the delivery cost and to improve efficiency. However, the traffic conditions in complex traffic environments, such as those in China, are more challenging compared to those in well-developed countries. Many types of moving objects (such as pedestrians, bicycles, electric bicycles, and motorcycles, etc.) share the road with autonomous vehicles, and their behaviors are not easy to track and predict. This paper introduces a technical solution from JD.com, a leading E-commerce company in China, to the autonomous last-mile delivery in complex traffic environments. Concretely, the methodologies in each module of our autonomous vehicles are presented, together with safety guarantee strategies. Up to this point, JD.com has deployed more than 300 self-driving vehicles for trial operations in tens of provinces of China, with an accumulated 715,819 miles and up to millions of on-road testing hours.