Postal Automation
I work for the German Post office - yellow van courier service consortium that you used, in the in house group IT division. I'm in *nix operations so obviously the only job I'm automating away really is my own. I know from the devs that I'm talking to that pretty much everything you can imagine is fully automated already except last mile delivery. There are several tricky aspects with last mile. For one it's not a company wide solution. The company delivers packages to some let's say less developed areas where any robot would be abused or stolen along with the contents. Also in terms of labor costs while automating away a German, Dutch or French letter carrier is potentially very profitable. Automating away a Columbian or Senegalese one is extremely unprofitable. There are many other challenges one of which is most customers actually value receiving their mail and packages from a human. I know that seems weird to us, but that's the reality. BTW our helldesk hates French couriers with a passion mostly reserved for war criminals.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
