Logistics

After agreeing to build 10,000 electric delivery vans for UPS last year, UK startup Arrival has today revealed specs and images for its latest all-electric van, ahead of trials on public roads "with key customers" this (northern) summer.

The German Aerospace Center has revealed a working prototype of a multi-use urban mobility and logistics vehicle called U-Shift, which is made up of an electric U-shaped base platform that's used to ferry around various pod modules.

To prevent packages being lost or damaged in transit – or at least make it easier to figure out what went wrong – European start-up LivingPackets has now unveiled the second generation of its reusable smart packaging called The Box.

EHang has achieved another important milestone in its effort to make its passenger-grade autonomous aerial vehicles a common sight in the skies. The CCAC has granted permission for the air taxis to be used for heavy-lift logistics.

If Amazon’s drone delivery service is to get off the ground, it’ll need some major infrastructure upgrades to support it. A new patent awarded to the retail giant could see drones being patched up and launched from mobile maintenance facilities carted around on the back of trains, trucks and ships.

​Nike's newly-expanded European Logistics Campus covers 150,000 sq m (1.6 million sq ft) and allows the sportswear behemoth to serve its online, retail and wholesale customers across 38 countries from a single location. It also makes the firm more efficient, more responsive and more sustainable.

From the bow to the bunker buster to the the hydrogen bomb, new technologies have changed the face of warfare, and 3D printing looks set to be just as revolutionary.

As internet commerce matures, consumers are expecting more immediate delivery of goods, but the packing warehouses need to keep up. To help speed up shipping, Fetch Robotics has unveiled Fetch and Freight; a robotic tag team that takes over the boring task of collecting and delivering stock.

In a bid to help make things run a little more smoothly for Santa and his festive workforce, an architecture competition was recently held to make the big man a new logistics center.

Fortifications designed to go up quickly find a low-tech solution to coming down quickly.

Raytheon has demonstrated its second generation XOS 2 exoskeleton (think of it as wearable robot guided by a human brain) which is lighter, faster and stronger than the XOS 1, yet uses half the power.

A new software system couples cargo space utilization and trip planning, to optimize transshipment, order combination, loading sequence and route planning. A version which can be integrated into existing trip planning software is expected by Q4 2009.