The company follows Amazon’s example (though much faster, given that the service only launched in SA some eighteen months ago) by bringing its products closer to our market.

Shorter time to Temu

What isn’t certain is how pricing will alter for purchases made from the local Temu depot. Current pricing takes advantage of South African import rules to offer sometimes ridiculous pricing to ship products at steep discounts. Shipping is free but import taxes, which tend to be lower than expected, bump the price up somewhat.

Bringing Temu’s products into the country before they’re ordered might be subject to different, more stringent import rules than minor purchases garner. It’ll be an interesting experiment to see whether it remains cheaper to order a product from China than it is from the local warehouse. If time is money, then you can save a little of the latter if you don’t mind a bit more of the former.

MyBroadband points out that the Chinese online retailer doesn’t list which local courier company will handle shipments. Odds are that FastWay and others listed on the Temu app will handle last-mile delivery, while Buffalo Logistics takes care of shipping from China to SA’s warehouse.

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Stretch goals

It looks a little like the sort of robot arm you might find in a particularly advanced assembly line but Stretch is a little more technological even than that. The robot’s base is  exactly the same size as a pallet, and it rolls along, meaning it can navigate around a warehouse environment. There’s a sensor tower (called a perception mast), giving the the apprentice Doc Ock arm the ability to see what it’s doing, and the arm itself includes seven degrees of freedom, meaning it can effectively reach into trucks to offload.

Its gripper is designed to handle various sorts of packages, while maintaining a high work rate, and the robot’s base is also packed with batteries. Stretch can travel a warehouse for a full workday, or sit in one spot on mains power and do some serious sorting. Boston Dynamics is very clear about what this robot is intended for, saying that Stretch lets buyers “[u]nload trucks and build pallets faster by sending the robot to the work, eliminating the need for new fixed infrastructure.”

Oh yes, Stretch is going on sale. There’s no price for the ‘bot at the present but those keen on having a rolling hunk of steel pack their pallets can register interest right now. The robot is expected to become widely available in 2022, but there’s still work to be done. The prototype, seen here, is functional, but the whole unit will be reengineered to make it more affordable and durable before it hits the market. .

The post Boston Dynamics’ Stretch – coming soon, to a warehouse near you appeared first on Stuff South Africa.