Research (2018-2024) on autonomous truck-drone delivery!

Key company cited in a few recent (dated) publication here and all current literature supports truck-drone as the optimal solution for last mile delivery for reducing cost and co2. That said, I’m here to stay, so long as the drone business remains under their control. The horsefly drone and falcon are about to dominate.

Prof. Niels Agatz Professor of Last-mile Supply Chain Analytics Rotterdam School of Management (RSM)(April, 2018). https://www.rsm.nl/discovery/2018/the-benefits-of-combining-drones-and-trucks-for-deliveries/ “With next-day delivery and even same-day delivery becoming standard, companies like Amazon and Alibaba are experimenting with drone technology to quickly get packages into the hands of customers. Early testing focuses on the practical question of how this can be done, but we took a step back to ask whether it is worth doing at all. Using a combination of a traditional delivery truck and a companion drone, our model says yes.”

Truck-Drone Hybrid Delivery Routing: Payload-Energy Dependency and No Fly Zones (Aug,2018) https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2615&context=open_access_theses “In this study, the previous vehicle routing models are extended to the hybrid delivery systems by taking into account two important practical issues: the effect of parcel weight on drone energy consumption and prohibited flying areas. The flight range of the drones is heavily susceptible to the loaded weight due to the limited battery life. Drones are also not allowed to fly over sensitive facilities regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or temporarily in certain areas due to weather-related conditions. “

Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy (June, 2022) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920922001249 “nnovative solutions for last-mile delivery have sparked great interest among consumers and logistics operators. The combination of new technologies with existing ones can lead to new possible last-mile delivery configurations, among which truck-drone joint delivery is one of the most promising.”

Collaborative truck multi-drone delivery system considering drone scheduling and en route operations (June, 2023) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10479-023-05418-y “The integration of drones into the conventional truck delivery system has gained substantial attention in the business and academic communities. Most existing works restrict the launch and recovery of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to customer locations (or nodes) in the delivery network. Nevertheless, emerging technological advances can allow drones to autonomously launch/land from a moving vehicle.”

CO2 emissions and delivery time of last-mile drone delivery using trucks https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1049/itr2.12437 “The analysis verified the highest possible level of reduction in CO2 emissions for the simultaneous and strategic operation of drones and trucks compared to diesel- or electric-only truck operations”

Hybrid Truck-Drone Delivery Systems: A Systematic Literature Review https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9869811 “A number of logistics providers have suggested the incorporation of drones with trucks to provide a more flexible delivery system”.

Drone-Truck Cooperated Delivery Under Time Varying Dynamics https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3524053.3542743 “However, drones have a number of problems such as limited energy budget, limited carrying capacity, etc. On the other hand, trucks have a larger carrying capacity, but they cannot reach all the places easily. Intriguingly, last-mile delivery cooperation between drones and trucks can synergistically improve delivery efficiency.”

Drone routing problem model for last-mile delivery using the public transportation capacity as moving charging stations https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10408-4

Optimisation of truck-drone parcel delivery using GRASP. Professor Sarab AlMuhaideb and the research team at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia (Nov, 2023) https://researchoutreach.org/articles/optimisation-truck-drone-parcel-delivery-using-grasp/?amp=1 “COVID-19 has also strengthened interest in contactless delivery methods, and truck–drone parcel deliveries are already being used in some parts of the world for time-sensitive deliveries, such as medicines, and for deliveries that are challenging for traditional vehicles to complete.”

A Collaborative Drone-Truck Delivery System with Memetic Computing Optimization https://www.techrxiv.org/users/434532/articles/691959-a-collaborative-drone-truck-delivery-system-with-memetic-computing-optimization “With technological breakthroughs, drone deliveries have become increasingly popular, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Driven by both economical benefit and efficiency, drone-truck combined deliveries are in demand.”

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Truck-Drone Delivery Problem https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/7/7/445 “Utilizing drones for delivery is an effective approach to enhancing delivery efficiency and lowering expenses. However, to overcome the delivery range and payload capacity limitations of drones, the combination of trucks and drones is gaining more attention. By using trucks as a flight platform for drones and supporting their take-off and landing, the delivery range and capacity can be greatly extended”