[ti:Robots Speed up Greece’s Mail Service] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]A group of small robots are helping speed up [00:03.72]mail delivery service in Greece’s capital city of Athens. [00:10.04]Fifty-five, four-wheeled autonomous mobile robots [00:15.12]are working in the mail center of the national mail service [00:19.28]called the Hellenic Post. [00:22.76]They scan postal codes, weigh mail pieces [00:27.68]and empty them into mail bags. [00:32.20]The robots are part of the state-owned [00:35.52]company's digital restructuring program. [00:40.52]It aims to deal with growing numbers of mail pieces [00:44.88]from online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic. [00:50.92]George Constantopoulos is head of the Hellenic Post. [00:56.64]He told Reuters, "Until recently, sorting has been carried out [01:02.20]by manual labor with a high demand in time, [01:05.84]often with errors occurring, causing delivery delays [01:10.52]for our customers and increased costs for the company." [01:16.56]The robots handle up to 80 percent [01:19.96]of the mail sorting at the center. [01:23.52]Constantopoulos said the process was up to three times faster, [01:29.16]and deliveries are nearly guaranteed for the next day. [01:35.88]The robots can handle as many as 168,000 pieces of mail, [01:43.00]weighing up to 15 kilograms, each day. [01:48.28]The robots only need to be recharged [01:51.72]every four hours for 5 minutes. [01:56.76]Constantopoulos said, "The purpose is not [02:00.12]to replace human workers with robots, but rather to augment [02:05.12]human workforces and make them more efficient." [02:10.44]Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced [02:14.96]that it would slow down mail delivery service in some areas [02:19.48]starting in October to cut costs. [02:23.44]USPS said some pieces of mail [02:27.04]could take up to two days longer to arrive. [02:31.92]And the service also raised the price [02:35.08]of sending a letter from 55 to 58 cents. [02:41.40]I’m Jonathan Evans. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM