Project Summary
This project proposes the development of an AI-driven Community-based Sharing Logistics Network by unlocking unused boot spaces of individuals making private journeys. This is to address the need for more logistics capacity driven by the shift to online shopping and consumers’ need for faster delivery.
Project Achievements
Activities The project attempts to identify key barriers to adoption that could impact the successful deployment of the proposed logistics concept. A number of hypotheses were initially generated and a survey was conducted to get an early indication on any mitigations that could be implemented. These mitigations were incorporated into the trial and a trial with selected businesses were conducted. The trial confirmed a number of hypotheses but also provided additional learning that could not have been obtained otherwise.
Conclusions
Human-centric features are critical to the successful adoption of an innovative concept, especially one that attempts to create a change in human behaviour. The human-centric features need to be manifested in the operating model, business model as well as the App technology (both front-end and back-end). If the proposed logistics concept can be widely implemented in the UK, it could decouple the linear correlation between the growth of logistics capacity with the generation of additional CO2 emissions, air pollution and traffic congestion.
Next Steps
The next steps is to expand the testing and ensure that the trial is even more representative (TRL 5 and TRL 6). The legal and insurance frameworks also need to be defined to support a more commercially oriented trial. The trial within this project has also highlighted an opportunity to redefine the reward mechanism for our users, in order to make it more attractive for users to continuously participate in the innovative logistics network.
