Deutsche Post of DHL will create the park of autonomous cars for the goods delivery

The company Nvidia announced on October 10, 2017 that world postal service Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) and ZF, the supplier of components for cars, signed the agreement on creation of the test park of autonomous cars for the goods delivery, since 2018.

Project Tasks

DPDHL will equip the electric cars with the autopiloted ZF ProAI system based on Nvidia Drive PX technology for the automatic goods delivery, including also a stage of "the last mile". Delivery of products from the central base to final destinations is considered the most difficult and expensive aspect of the express and commercial product delivery.

Deutsche Post of DHL will create the park of autonomous cars for the goods delivery

In the DPDHL park — 3 thousand StreetScooter electrovans which can be equipped with numerous ZF sensors, including the cameras, lidars and radars supplying with data the ZF ProAI system. Using algorithms of the artificial intelligence (AI) the car will be able to understand the environment, to plan a safe route, to go on it and to park. All this as a result will provide more exact and safe delivery at its lower cost, expect in DPDHL.

Project Progress

For commissioning of mail transport based on AI the DPDHL company already set in the data center supercomputer NVIDIA DGX-1 for training of the neuronets. Further DPDHL is going to start the trained models in work on the cars equipped with the platform Nvidia Drive PX.

Plans for start of the park of a car

The prototype of mail transport is equipped with six cameras, one radar and two lidars which supply with data the Nvidia Drive PX platform. Test commissioning of the park from 300 cars is planned for 2018, and official start of the autopiloted park from 3 thousand units of transport will take place in 2019.

Deutsche Post of DHL will bring the StreetScooter park to new level, thanks to the existing and future generation of sensors of recognition of an environment and the ZF ProAI AI system based on Nvidia technologies — Stefan Sommer, the CEO of ZF considers. — In supply logistics and at a stage of "the last mile" where at autonomous transport huge advantages, departures will be able to be delivered it is time-invariant day and presence of personnel, without any noise and environmental pollution that will help to unload highways in the central parts of the cities.