Published on January 7, 2020
The holidays may be over, but that means shipping and returns season has begun. Right now the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is developing a project that could potentially help us send and receive our packages sooner.
The $1.5 million project is funded by the D.O.E’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Vehicle Technologies and led by the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab, directed by Anne Goodchild. It’s been in the works for about a year.
When you’re sending or returning a package it’s easy to forget the obstacles delivery drivers will go through to get it to its final destination on time.
But perhaps one of the biggest obstacles urban drivers face is parking.
“You have restaurants and coffee stands that are on the first floor of a building that’s got a bunch of offices on top of it. Sometimes there are residential apartment buildings right next door. There’s problems with the alleyways,” Franklin said.
Franklin is part of a team of researchers at PNNL that are developing an app for delivery drivers to help make them more efficient.
“The technology goal is to hopefully reduce some of the pain of getting the last 50 feet. (That’s) the tagline from the folks at UW,” she said. The app will use artificial intelligence to increase productivity and reduce wasted time and fuel used to find parking.
Continue reading at KHQ News.
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