SELF-DRIVING delivery vehicles that are polite to pedestrians? Faster and more precise robotic arms? JD.com, the largest challenger to Alibaba’s e-commerce empire in China, is investing in technology to speed up warehouse operations and delivery to shoppers who want service quickly.

In China, it’s testing drone delivery. It has opened an automated warehouse that’s improved manual sorting and has moved on to testing deliveries using unmanned vehicles at universities in Beijing. It also uses these self-driving vehicles that look like rolling ice cream carts to move goods around inside its warehouses.

Though it does not sell in the United States, the Beijing-based online retailer is also leaning on its 2-year-old research and development lab in Silicon Valley to recruit top talent and get access to tech startups.

Dr. Hui Cheng, the head of robotics research at JD.’s Silicon Valley research center, said the center’s main goal is to serve consumers in China and Southeast Asia. He said he’s not planning to use the center as a foothold to launch in the United States and directly challenge Amazon. Under Cheng, who previously worked on Amazon Go’s cashierless store project, JD is working on areas like artificial intelligence.

“Chinese consumers are a bit spoiled. They’re expecting high-quality products. We can directly deliver to people’s doors, a bit different from the United States where they just drop it off,” he said.

“Our delivery employees are in charge of certain geographical areas and are very familiar with the customers in those areas. They know when they’ll be home. They call when they get there. They’re very accommodating.”

Hui said JD has been testing indoor and outdoor autonomous deliveries and robotic arms at the Silicon Valley research center. “We’re developing state-of-the-art technologies in many areas like artificial intelligence and natural-language processing,” he said.

The research lab is also emphasizing social robots, according to Hui. “How are they going to be part of the social environment? How are they going to interact with pedestrians? How will they be polite? We don’t want them to be considered threatening or dangerous,” he said.

“We are developing a lot of natural-dialogue capabilities so they will know how to speak in the future.” (SD-Agencies)