What is it about?
Traditionally, trucks have been used in last-mile delivery systems to deliver packages to customers. One of the applications of drone technology is in this sector, to improve the total energy efficiency of the system with potentially faster deliveries. In this paper, we explore a kind of local policy-compliant system where the drone travels with the truck, thus having dynamic points of launch and return. We study the effect of policies on such a system, and use realistic numerical simulation to perform a qualitative analysis based on Blade Element Theory propeller energy model and Ant Colony Optimization meta-heuristic to solve the problem in a matter of minutes on average servers.
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Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Last mile delivery system is an energy hungry sector, which is projected to only increase further due increasing demand. Thus, our findings of saving about 1.6 US gallons a day using drones in our framework is a huge energy advantage for efficiency, especially since an unoptimized drone configuration was used on real map network with environmental effects such as due to local winds and temperature.
Perspectives
I believe the policy-conscious algorithm developed to solve the problem has immense potential, and lays the foundation for work towards solving Heterogenous Delivery Problems algorithmically with both practical application and implementation.
Parth Singh
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Balancing Trade-Offs: The Energy Efficiency of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in Last-Mile Delivery and Operational Policy Restrictions, July 2024, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2024-3646.
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