Abstract
We address the problem of managing a drone-based delivery process. We consider the specific situation of a delivery company, that uses a set of trucks equipped with a given number of drones. In particular, items of a limited weight and size could be delivered by using drones. A vehicle, during its trip, can launch a drone when serving a customer, the drone performs a delivery for exactly one customer and returns to the vehicle, possibly at a different customer location. Each drone can be launched several times during the vehicle’s route. It is imposed a limit on the maximum distance that each drone can travel and synchronization requirements between vehicle and drone should be ensured. In particular, it is assumed that a vehicle waits for a drone for a maximum period of time. The aim is to serve all customers within their time window. The problem is modeled as a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows. The aim of this work is to analyze the delivery process with drones, by taking into account the total transportation cost and highlighting strategical issues, related to the use of drones. The numerical results, collected on instances generated to be very close to reality, show that the use of drones is not economically convenient in the classical terms. However, when considering negative externalities related to the use of classical vehicles and quality of service requirements, the benefit of using drones becomes relevant.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Toth, P., Vigo, D.: Vehicle routing: problems, methods, and applications. MOS-SIAM Series on Optimization 18, 2nd edn. SIAM, Philadelphia (2014)
Applegate, D.L., Bixby, R.E., Chvtal, V., Cook, W.J.: The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Computational Study. Princeton University Press, New Jersey (2006)
Popper, B.: Drones could make Amazons dream of free delivery profitable (2015). http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/3/8719659/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-profit-freeshipping-small-items
BBC News: Amazon testing drones for deliveries (2013). http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25180906
Bermingham, F.: Fedex researching drone delivery but not for widespread use (2014). http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fedex-researching-drone-delivery-not-widespread-use-1471063
DHL Press Release: DHL parcelcopter launches initial operations for research purposes (2014). http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_2014/group/dhl_parcelcopter_launches_initial_operations_for_research_purposes.html
Gambella, C., Lodi, A., Vigo, D.: Exact Methods for Solving the Carrier-Vehicle Traveling Salesman Problem (CVTSP). Presented at VeRoLog Meeting, Vienna (2015)
Murray, C.C., Chu, A.G.: The flying sidekick traveling salesman problem: optimization of drone assisted parcel delivery. Trans. Res. Part C Emerg. Technol. 54, 86–109 (2015)
Agatz, N., Bouman, P., Schmidt, M.: Optimization Approaches for the Truck and Drone Delivery Problem. Presented at the INFORMS TSL Workshop, Berlin (2015)
Wang, X., Poikonen, S., Golden, B.: The vehicle routing problem with drones: several worst-case results. Optim. Lett.(2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-016-1035-3
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Di Puglia Pugliese, L., Guerriero, F. (2017). Last-Mile Deliveries by Using Drones and Classical Vehicles. In: Sforza, A., Sterle, C. (eds) Optimization and Decision Science: Methodologies and Applications. ODS 2017. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 217. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67308-0_56
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67308-0_56
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67307-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67308-0
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)