USPS Wows At CES: Smart Blue Box

Iconic blue postal collection boxes have gone Artificial Intelligence: the USPS showed its Smart Blue Box at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

According to the designers, the Smart Blue Box can “Weigh a package, calculate postage, find the closest open post office and more, even while your hands are full of bags and packages. The iconic blue box is now a powerful information center, available 24/7 on almost any street corner.”

The concept and prototype got developed in partnership between US Postal Service and the digital innovation agency MRM//McCANN in New York.

“Down the road, the A.I.-enabled assistant could be one day installed on almost every one of the 150,000+ USPS blue collection boxes across the United States,” according to the developers. “At the talking mailbox, a simple “Hello Blue Box” will start the conversation between the cloud-based assistant and the customer. Customers are able to ask any postal-related question at any time, so they get the contextual answers they need at the moment they need them—without having to pick up their smartphone.”

The SmartBlue Box features a scale surface to weigh the mail.

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