Meituan Unmanned Drone Settles in Smart Park in Shenzhen, Supports Food Deliverymen
On Friday, Meituan announced the beginning of the first normalized trial route of its UAV distribution in Shenzhen. The company is looking to gradually establish a low-altitude intelligent logistics network of “3 km delivery within 15 minutes” in the area of operation.
The intelligent park, named Galaxy WORLD, integrates production and research, offices, shopping malls, business incubators, high-end residences, apartments and hotels, and has a total construction area of about 1.6 million square meters.
In the future, Meituan will open more UAV distribution stations to provide services for communities and parks within a 3 km radius of the park.
At the initial stage of normal trial operations, Meituan UAV reached agreements with many restaurants in the Galaxy WORLD park that offer fast food, drinks, afternoon tea, and other food items. In the future, the company will expand its platform to host other merchants in order to provide consumers with more choices and a better delivery service overall.
For Meituan, the core value of UAV is to supplement delivery capacity. Orders will be dispatched to both riders and UAVs to raise the bar in food delivery services.
During the service scope and operation period of Meituan UAV distribution, when users place orders with stores that have the “UAV distribution” label, the intelligent dispatching system will analyze and calculate the order and then assign to UAVs orders that have a higher distribution difficulty or strict time limits.
Meituan UAVs will help the park continue to transform its digital presence by improving the overall operational efficiency of deliveries within the park and meet the consumption needs of different groups of people.
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At the beginning of this year, Meituan UAVs completed the first order for real users in Shenzhen while also distributing emergency materials to residents in isolated areas in Nanshan District of Shenzhen during the epidemic. Up to now, the Meituan UAV distribution service has landed in 7 communities in Shenzhen, covering more than 8,000 households.
In this regard, Mao Yinian, head of Meituan UAV business, said, “It is Shenzhen’s unique policy and industrial advantage that makes Meituan chose to trial UAV distribution service here. Furthermore, the whole process was accelerated by situations brought on by the pandemic.”
