May. 21, 2024
Source: Rino.ai
"Replacing traditional logistics distribution with a combination of driverless vehicles, autonomous driving technology, and handling robots, leveraging information technology and artificial intelligence."
"This system forms part of a city’s public service infrastructure. Any enterprise, product, information, or logistics facility can connect and utilize it as a shared public service platform. It can integrate various B2B and B2C service models of existing enterprises, maximizing the utilization and sharing of social resources."
As early as 2020, industry experts had proposed empowering logistics distribution with autonomous driving technology—not only to enrich the urban public service system but also to achieve commercialization of products, delivering a win–win outcome.
Rino.ai successfully seized this model innovation and brought it into commercial reality. The company quickly established strategic partnerships with multiple retail enterprises such as Yonghui Superstores, Freshippo (Hema), and Fresh Legend, jointly creating various operational models for autonomous driving + retail.
Rino.ai has been working with Fresh Legend, a leading Anhui-based retail enterprise, for nearly a year. Since the two parties entered into a strategic partnership in July last year, they have continuously explored how to apply autonomous driving technology for operational model innovation, enabling leapfrog growth in the retail sector.
Now, they have found the “right answer.”
The Rino.ai + Fresh Legend Retail Innovation Model
Fresh Legend’s satellite warehouse ships to multiple stores, using Rino.ai’s driverless delivery vehicles to transport goods across multiple temperature zones and at high frequency.
1. Grouped Distribution: Eight stores form a distribution unit. One of these stores serves as a small front-store-back-kitchen distribution and processing center, responsible for cross-distributing standard goods and processing fresh products for all eight stores.
2. High-Frequency Driverless Delivery: Rino.ai’s driverless delivery vehicles complete multiple deliveries per day to the eight stores, with on-demand dispatch. Delivery cost, frequency, and efficiency already far exceed the multi-delivery-per-day model of ordinary convenience stores.
3. Urban Road Approval: The vehicles have been approved for operation on urban public roads in Hefei, navigating city streets and alleys freely, without occupying traffic lanes, and loading/unloading at designated points.
The right-side cargo compartment of a Rino.ai delivery vehicle has a 3-cubic-meter capacity, accommodating 26 standard storage boxes.
A Breakthrough Application of Autonomous Driving in Retail
The Rino.ai driverless vehicle represents not just a change in delivery methods, but a disruptive transformation of retail operations and management. It forms part of a satellite warehouse supply chain model (retail terminal satellite warehouse – retail enterprise central warehouse – factory), characterized by:
Retail terminal satellite warehouses (such as Fresh Legend’s eight-store distribution unit) use Rino.ai driverless delivery vehicles to transport general merchandise and fresh food according to actual sales orders, ensuring minimal inventory, shortest processing time, and maximum freshness at low cost and high efficiency.
By integrating this with its own POS system, Fresh Legend has achieved a 50% reduction in labor costs and a 50% reduction in product loss, while also increasing sales opportunities by 15%.
Assuming an average daily sales of RMB 20,000 per store, each store gains an additional RMB 3,000 in daily sales. With Fresh Legend’s 200 stores, this equates to RMB 600,000 in additional daily revenue, delivering a sharp boost in economic benefits.
This demonstrates that the retail industry—one of the innovative application scenarios where Rino.ai uses autonomous driving technology to reduce logistics transportation costs and empower urban public services—has already made a breakthrough.
As a cutting-edge technology, the future of autonomous driving is already emerging from the fog into clear skies. In the waves of autonomous driving development to come, Rino.ai will continue to sail forward, innovating and advancing.
Source: “AI’s Disruptive Impact on the Development Direction of Retail” — Retail Insight, May 15, 2024
