Yunji Technology is partnering with Taobao Flash Shopping, Alibaba’s rapid delivery business, to expand robotic delivery in residential buildings and hotels. The robots are meant to take over from couriers at the building entrance.
The cooperation was reported by the Chinese portal China Robot Network. It aims to extend the use of delivery robots to indoor spaces that couriers struggle to reach. The two companies plan to work on product development, operations and integration with Taobao Flash Shopping’s delivery services.
How the delivery robots get orders to apartment doors
The planned system splits the work between couriers and robots. A courier first carries the order from the store to the building. A Yunji robot then takes over and brings the goods to the recipient’s home.
In this scenario, the robot automatically picks up the items, takes the lift, makes the delivery and sends a notification to the customer.
The approach is aimed in particular at residential complexes and closed buildings where couriers have difficulty reaching apartments directly.
Integration with Taobao Flash Shopping’s order system
The partnership is not limited to installing robots in buildings. The two companies want to integrate robotic delivery into Taobao Flash Shopping’s order processing, so that the service runs without a break from the store to the recipient.
This integration requires several technical systems to be coordinated:
- Planning and assigning tasks across multiple robots.
- Communicating with lifts so the robots can move between floors.
- Connecting to the buildings’ access control systems.
- Tracking orders and sending notifications to customers.
Taobao Flash Shopping handles the Alibaba group’s real-time delivery operations. Its range includes food products, everyday items, digital devices and cosmetics. According to the description of its business, some deliveries can be completed in as little as 30 minutes.
Yunji’s hotel robot experience and its move into residential buildings
Yunji Technology draws on several years of operating robots and delivery systems in hotels. The company also supplies robotic solutions to hospitals and other professional facilities.
According to figures released on its business, Yunji Technology has supplied products to a cumulative total of 45,000 hotels. This figure refers to the establishments the company serves, not to the number of robots delivered.
The same figures show that the average daily number of robots in operation rose by 20 to 25% between January and September of the year in question, compared with the same period of the previous year.
With Taobao Flash Shopping, Yunji now plans to apply this experience to residential buildings. The partnership is an announcement of cooperation and large-scale deployment, not a widespread rollout already completed in apartments.
The two partners intend in particular to adapt robot operations to the constraints of residential buildings, where access management, lifts and orders must be coordinated with existing delivery services.