New AI tech in Amazon vans spotlights packages to save drivers effort and time

Amazon to deploy 1,000 electric delivery vans with Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval by early 2025.

While looking for packages in the back of vans 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.

With Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR), a new AI-powered solution, delivery drivers will no longer have to spend time organizing 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.

The idea of VAPR began at the start of 2020, when a team within Amazon Transportation took the initiative to imagine a world where technology is used as an invisible force to help drivers. “We had to think about factors that are unique to the delivery experience, such as lighting and space constraints inside vans,” said John Colucci, product manager, Amazon Transportation. A few years later, and thanks to the feedback from drivers piloting the tech, VAPR will be rolled out in 1,000 Amazon electric delivery vans from Rivian by early 2025.