GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Between shortages in the supply chain, employees and truck drivers this year, there’s likely going to be a lot of packages showing up a bit late this year, but postal workers are hoping to make up for the lag with their new, robotic co-workers.
“Our little ‘R2s’ running around beeping and booping,” said U.S. Postal Service Engineer David Abell as he looked out at the group of robots zipping around their Grand Prairie sorting facility.
Abell helped program the new robots when they arrived in North Texas. It’s part of a fleet of 112 state-of-the-art package sorting robots purchased by USPS this year and put into service just in time for the holiday rush.
The robots look like rolling carts that each have small conveyor belts on their top. A postal employee scans the barcode on a package and places it on top the belt on the robot waiting in front of them. An advanced computer system then assigns that package to the robot and tells its artificial intelligence where it needs to ship to. The robot then rolls down the columns and rows of large sorting boxes in front of it and stops to drop the package in the appropriate one so that USPS staff can then transport it to its proper post office in the DFW Metroplex and onto its destination.
Unlike previous robotics used by the postal service, Abell said these robots are also completely mobile, so they can move and be programmed to sort wherever postal workers need them.
“This system is absolutely huge. It’s a new technology, it’s a higher through-point, it’s a better use of man hours,” said Abell.
The robots, Abell said, are averaging hundreds more packages sorted per hour than in the past at its North Texas operation. According to USPS, it estimates the robot fleet across the country is moving an extra 4.5 million packages every day throughout the holiday season; a holiday season that could be a big one.
Postal leaders say they moved more than 1.1 billion packages in 2020 with an estimated 925 million coming in the holiday shipping season. With the continued rise of online shopping and shipping, they estimate as many as 950 million packages may go through their system throughout this holiday season.
As a result, USPS began a new campaign early this year called Delivering for America, a $40 billion investment over the next 10 years that includes more workers and equipment. Some of the earliest implementations of that plan include those new robots and annex facilities like the 230,000 square foot one in Grand Prairie.
Albert Ruiz, communication specialist for the USPS, said that facility and 39 others like it across the country are already making for a much smoother holiday shipping season than last, despite all of the other challenges facing nationwide shipping and logistics right now.
“The mail has been coming in, it’s been moving unlike last year where we had a couple of hiccups and we were kind of caught off guard. This year we’re more than ready,” said Ruiz.
Ruiz said the robots, besides moving packages through the system much faster, are solving some bigger problems, like the worker shortage across the country. Ruiz said the Postal Service has not been immune to the situation that many industries are struggling with, but the robots are allowing them to fulfill some of the roles in the sorting process that remain open.
Abell said humans aren’t being taken out of the equation by his bots any time soon.
“They’re not the smartest things in the world. This isn’t Star Wars,” he said.
Abell said the robots are proving more like co-workers that are taking on some of the more laborious work for their employees. He hopes they get a few more packages in getting to their trees on time this season.