Amazon Cooking Up Smart Glasses For Delivery Drivers

In an attempt to carve more seconds from the time it takes to make a delivery, Amazon is developing bespoke smart glasses for its drivers.

The glasses would guide drivers on the final leg of the delivery, Reuters is reporting.

“If successful, the glasses would provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen, along their routes and at each stop,” the wire service says. 

This could include “left or right directions off elevators and around obstacles such as gates or aggressive dogs”.

“The glasses would also free drivers from using handheld Global Positioning System devices, allowing them to carry more packages.”

Amazon is known for squeezing every last ounce of juice out of its staff and contract workers, whether they’re packing boxes or delivering them. 

The delivery part of the journey can include multiple phases, with the final phase – sometimes referred to as the “Last Mile” generally the most complex, as a driver has to negotiate one-way streets and traffic changes, find somewhere to park, extract the correct box from the van, and then locate the address.

Reuters says Amazon has worked for years to develop an in-house delivery network, “including its own airline, long-haul trucking and sprawling suburban warehouses. In doing so, it hopes to speed deliveries and pare expenses by reducing its reliance on couriers UPS and FedEx”.

In October Amazon said that by early 2025 it would deploy 1,000 electric delivery vans with “Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR)”.

It described VAPR as “a new AI-powered solution” that would mean “delivery drivers will no longer have to spend time organising packages by stops, reading labels, or manually checking key identifiers like a customer’s name or address to ensure they have the right packages. They simply have to look for VAPR’s green light; grab, and go”.

Amazon said that time wasted searching for products in the back of a van “only takes a few minutes at each stop for a delivery driver, that time can add up when delivering packages to over a hundred Amazon customers each day”.

One of the concerns so far in the development of the smart glasses, which are said to be based off Amazon’s Echo Frames, is that the weight required to store a long-life battery and other tech makes the glasses too heavy and uncomfortable.

“We are continuously innovating to create an even safer and better delivery experience for drivers,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. “We otherwise don’t comment on our product roadmap.”