October - December 2018

MailBot

As part of a Human Centred Robotics university module, our team of 7 people designed and constructed an autonomous vehicle called MailBot.

Mailbot was created to serve as an internal mail delivery system for the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department building at Imperial College London. It is a prototype solution to the challenges presented within the 'Final Mile' of delivery, the last stage of the delivery process of goods from a transportation hub to their final destination.

We wrote a design report, presenting the research for the design of the robot. This design report describes and justifies thw high-level decisions made when building MailBot, with a focus on how human-robot interactions can affect the user's experience.

We also wrote a final report, justifying the design decisions made based on the hypotheses that MailBot seeks to test, and presents the results from the subsequent human-robot interaction study. The study concludes that the quality ofhuman interaction impacts people's willingness to use autonomous delivery robots and that demonstration of successful delivery will encourage its integration into a working environment.