Concept SALi is a self-service kiosk that will transform postal service and delivery by reducing the time
meldCX launched Concept SALi to ease package shipping process. Credit: Sarah Richter from Pixabay
Melbourne-based meldCX has unveiled Concept SALi, short for Smart Automated Lodgement API, at this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF 2020). meldCX, which has a U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas, provides customers with solutions that transform the process of building and deploying apps. Concept SALi is a self-service kiosk that will transform postal service and delivery by reducing the time it takes to scan the address written on a package and further automating the package delivery process.
“With an increasingly connected world and the rise of e-commerce, consumer preferences have moved more toward package delivery, both domestic and international,” Stephen Borg, meldCX CEO and co-founder, said. “This has spurred a steep increase in activity for delivery services all around the world, with added pressures for them to deliver and respond to market demand. meldCX’s Concept SALi automates this complex process, allowing delivery services to provide more efficient customer service and a brand point-of-presence for customers.”
The project brings together several technology leaders. Concept SALi is designed by meldCX is built on AOPEN commercial hardware and powered by Intel artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and Cloud vision services from Google and Microsoft. Concept SALi kiosks use powerful machine learning and computer vision technology to scan and detect each package––automatically verifying its size, weight, handwritten information, the sender’s identity and shipping cost. This removes the guesswork, manual entry and complexity from shipping a package for customers and post office employees.
Additional benefits provided by Concept SALi, for customers and businesses alike, include:
Package scanning completed in less than two minutes
Post office line wait time reduced from 15 minutes to five minutes during peak times
More accurate address recognition
Elimination of paper forms
Insight into customer behavior through automatically gathered data analytics
Concept SALi is currently being evaluated for further adoption by Australia Post, Australia’s United States Postal Service (USPS) equivalent.
“Australia Post delivers more than 3.3 billion items annually to more than 12 million addresses nationwide,” David McNamara, general manager of the post office network at Australia Post, said. “We host 230 million customer visits––both businesses and consumers––in our post offices each year and continue to see growth in parcel volumes with more than 73% of Australian households shopping online.”
McNamara says the kiosks aim to help transform customer experiences.
“We want to keep delivering outstanding customer experiences to support this growth, which is why innovative, intelligent technology like Concept SALi makes it much easier and faster for customers to lodge parcels and provides more features that customers want, such as bulk lodgement,” McNamara said.
Borg says Concept SALi’s integrated technology––such as Intel chipsets, a Core i5 processor, Intel RealSense Depth Camera D435, Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick 2 and OpenVINO Framework––was designed by meldCX to work seamlessly together.
“Everything is managed from a single pane of glass, which allows for quick diagnosis of issues on both hardware and software levels,” Borg said.
Source: Company Press Release