AI-Powered Delivery Optimization at Meituan

Meituan leverages artificial intelligence to enhance everyday services, especially its massive food‑delivery platform.

Although ordering a meal appears simple, the underlying logistics are extremely complex; a rider handling five orders faces over 113,400 possible route combinations, requiring sophisticated AI calculations to find the optimal path.

Beyond rider routing, Meituan’s AI assists merchants, users, and even special groups such as visually‑impaired customers through voice‑controlled ordering.

In an interview at the Rebuild 2020 conference, Chief Scientist Xia Huaxia explained why Meituan employs a chief scientist and how AI drives efficiency across the company.

The AI system processes tens of millions of daily orders and hundreds of thousands of riders, using massive combinatorial optimization to reduce delivery time and labor costs.

AI also powers tools for merchants, helping them analyze customer preferences, optimize pricing, and make data‑driven decisions.

For blind users, Meituan developed voice interaction features that enable hands‑free ordering.

In retail, computer‑vision cameras monitor shelves to automatically detect out‑of‑stock items and trigger replenishment, improving store operations.

Robotics are deployed in unmanned warehouses where robotic arms handle picking and sorting, and experiments with autonomous delivery robots and drones are underway.

Recent trials in Beijing’s Shunyi district demonstrated fully autonomous vehicles delivering groceries over a 10‑kilometre round trip.

Meituan’s vision is to augment riders rather than replace them, using AI and autonomous vehicles to handle long‑distance, hazardous routes while riders focus on the final short‑distance delivery.