The delivery man has become obsolete. His only duties today are to deliver us junk mail, notices from the government and the occasional letter from the bank. Aside from that, the Internet has helped reduce the workload of the mail man, though unions and governments have still tried to keep them relevant (sounds like the taxi industry, huh?).
Robots may finally spell the end for government mail services worldwide.
Swiss Post, the national post service in Switzerland, is testing out robots. The postal service will start a test next month in three cities across the country to see if robots can deliver food and medicine (dummy drugs).
Postal officials are very curious to see how pedestrians will react to the mail man robots.
Developed by Starship Technologies, the robots are small and come with six-wheeled pods. They travel very slowly on sidewalks, but they do avoid obstacles, like animals and pedestrians.
Officials in Great Britain, Germany and Washington, D.C. will be paying close attention to the results in Switzerland. These jurisdictions will be testing out the robots next month.
If the experiment turns out to be a success, will this spell the ultimate end for delivery men? Not quite, says Claudia Pletscher, the head of development programs and innovation at Swiss Post.
“We don’t believe in substituting the human being part,” Pletscher told CNN.
Plus unions would never allow that to happen. They hate progress.
Robots will simply make things more efficient and improve productivity. If human jobs are lost as a result of these robots then they will be allocated into a different role in the postal service or into a different sector that needs labor.
Leave a Comment