This year during “618”, JD Logistics commercially executed the largest private 5G AGV deployment ever witnessed in the intralogistics sector with 100+ self-developed AGVs (automated ground vehicles) running over a 5G network. This was carried out at one of JD’s busiest “Asia No 1. Logistics Parks” in Changsha, Hunan province. 

 

 

618 Grand Promotion (“618”) is the largest mid-year shopping festival in China, created by JD.com, one of the largest e-commerce companies in China and globally. During the “618” period, the total orders for online shopping generally jump multiple times compared to normal periods, causing tremendous pressure and challenges to logistics. 

 

 

This year during the “618” event, the AGV area of the warehouse was able to process as many as 110,000 shopping items during its peak 24-hour sales period. With the support of a fully optimized end-to-end private 5G network, together with in-house QR code sensing AGVs by JD Logistics, the scaled private 5G deployment demonstrated notable performance improvement for the warehouse over a traditional WiFi network. 

“JD’s AGVs have helped increase the moving efficiency of the park by 200 percent,” said a spokesperson from Changsha Asia No.1. “More specifically, private 5G is able to provide AGVs with stable and low-latency based wireless connectivity, which resolved the previous issue of AGV heartbeat abnormality due to higher latency with unpredictable fluctuation associated with WiFi; this has profound impact on the stability of AGVs and hence their efficient operation especially during peak hours”, the JD Logistics spokesperson confirmed. 

 

 

Further, statistical analysis has been performed based on a month of data collected from the deployment; it showed that AGVs connected to private 5G were able to maintain close to zero packet loss, with connection timeout number dropping by a whopping 70 percent in comparison to historical WiFi-based data. These attributes resolved the pain points of connection instability and prone-to-interference issues that persisted with WiFi. In addition, the total solution is further strengthened by the strong security features native to 5G.  

 

 

In addition to the private 5G deployment for the AGVs at JD’s warehouses, JD Logistics is also planning to further expand the usage of 5G to other relevant use cases such as intelligent material handling & storage, logistics visual monitoring and trace-ability, creating an end-to-end 5G platform to further improve the total management efficiency of JD’s industrial parks. 

 

Overall, JD Logistics will focus on more scenarios to comprehensively promote the digital transformation of its logistics business. Combining technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and augmented reality (AR), JD Logistics is realizing the in-depth integration of 5G and logistics applications for future innovation. 

 

 

As a leader in the field of intelligent logistics, JD Logistics has engaged in 5G cooperation with major domestic mobile operators since 2019, and has in-depth cooperation with partners including AILINK. In recent years, with the addition of even more partners, JD Logistics has continued to expand its "circle of friends" to create an open and win-win 5G ecosystem for the future of logistics.