Robot on the line

Test bed at scale

According to the postal sector's current Five-Year Plan, China aims for an 88 percent full-automation rate across large-scale processing centers.

In Guangdong, which processes approximately 22 percent of the national parcel volume, automation is expanding rapidly. Automated guided vehicles traverse warehouse floors, while 820 autonomous delivery vehicles and 247 drones operate across urban routes.

At large processing centers in Guangzhou, automation has moved well beyond conventional conveyor belts.

Robotic arms feed parcels into sorting systems, automated guided vehicles move cages and pallets across processing floors, while software increasingly monitors parcel flows and adjusts equipment in real time.

One digital system, for example, monitors congestion across sorting lines and automatically adjusts their operating speeds when traffic begins to build. At one processing center, sorting-line jams during the night shift fell from more than 20 a month to just one after the system was introduced, according to He.

Another trial system uses three-dimensional sensing to measure how much space remains inside trucks, check whether parcels are loaded properly and alert workers as vehicles approach loading bays. The center said it has cut waiting time between successive vehicles by about 20 percent.

Such changes point to an important evolution in logistics technology. Earlier automation largely focused on replacing a particular manual task with a machine. Increasingly, digital systems are being used to detect problems, adjust operations and coordinate equipment across an entire processing center.