Uncrewed Systems Technology 047 l Aergility ATLIS l AI focus l Clevon 1 UGV l Geospatial insight l Intergeo 2022 report l AUSA 2022 report I Infinity fuel cell l BeeX A.IKANBILIS l Propellers focus I Phoenix Wings Orca

48 T he ideal logistics company is a well-oiled machine, with packages arriving on or ahead of schedule via the most efficient routes, taking up storage space for the minimum amount of time, and never going missing. Helping logistics firms achieve these goals was what made Estonia-based Cleveron’s automation technologies – smart lockers and robotic parcel terminals, to be specific – a commercial success in the 2000s. And just as automation can eliminate human error, so autonomy can add human intelligence – and hence safety, reliability and productivity – to logistics processes. “Having installed its automated parcel machines [APMs] around the world, Cleveron started thinking about what the future of logistics might be, particularly how to automate the process of actually getting the parcels into their lockers and terminals,” recounts Sander Sebastian Agur, CEO of Clevon (which was spun off from Cleveron in April 2022). “Initially we developed a fleet of UAVs that we felt would fit well with our APMs, but tests indicated too many sources of interference that could potentially bring our service down that way. So in our use case, autonomous delivery cars presented a much more reliable and repeatable means of creating smart connections between our customers’ warehouses and their Cleveron APMs, and that opened up the possibility of mass cost-effective last-mile deliveries, so we put together a work group to design and build the cars.” Cleveron spun out its Team Mobility in 2022 as Clevon, with a mandate to form a business out of its autonomous car. That car is called the Clevon 1, a compact, autonomous road vehicle measuring 1150 mm in width, 1550 mm in height and 2500 mm in length. Each one can carry up to 100 kg of freight at speeds of up to 50 kph, although legislation for real-world street traffic tests thus far require it to stay under 25 kph during operations. With clean mobility being a key goal, it is fully electric and can go for 80 km – or 5 hours – between charges. With logistics productivity being another goal, its data link has successfully allowed one teleoperator, in Estonia, to control a test vehicle in Texas, 8500 km away (during which latency stayed below 200 ms at all times). These days, the Clevon 1 is engaged in commercial operations with international couriers DPD Estonia and DHL Express Estonia, as well as in pilot programmes across Europe, with scale production to follow soon. The company’s engineers aim to continue improving the platform, the goal being SAE Level 4 autonomy by 2024. Concept and development Three generations of the Clevon 1 have been developed, with the first prototype (named the Lotte) having been built in 2017. The second prototype, called the Cleveron 701, was released in 2020 and soon became the first uncrewed vehicle in Europe to receive a licence to operate on public roads. The current Clevon 1 is the third-generation vehicle, Rory Jackson explains how this autonomous road vehicle is setting new standards of productivity in last- mile deliveries Part and parcel December/January 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology