A Literature Review of Drone-Based Package Delivery Logistics Systems and Their Implementation Feasibility

Abstract

In recent years, e-commerce businesses have seen an increase in the daily volume of packages to be delivered, as well as an increase in the number of particularly demanding customer expectations. In this respect, the delivery mechanism became prohibitively expensive, particularly for the final kilometer. To stay competitive and meet the increased demand, businesses began to look for innovative autonomous delivery options for the last mile, such as autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles/drones, which are a promising alternative for the logistics industry. Following the success of drones in surveillance and remote sensing, drone delivery systems have begun to emerge as a new solution to reduce delivery costs and delivery time. In the coming years, autonomous drone sharing systems will be an unavoidable logistical solution, especially with the new laws/recommendations introduced by the Flight World Organization on how to organize the operations of these special unmanned airline systems. This paper provides a comprehensive literature survey on a set of relevant research issues and highlights the representative solutions and concepts that have been proposed thus far in the design and modeling of the logistics of drone delivery systems, with the purpose of discussing the respective performance levels reached by the various suggested approaches. Furthermore, the paper also investigates the central problems to be addressed and briefly discusses and outlines a series of interesting new research avenues of relevance for drone-based package delivery systems.

The Use of Drones for Last-Mile Delivery: A Numerical Case Study in Milan, Italy

“…Therefore, it is possible to group the different works into four macro categories, which in fact represent the main challenges and lines of research. The aspects addressed by the scholars are: (i) the drone routing problem; (ii) the drone assignment problem; (iii) the charging process and the location of charging stations; and (iv) the fleet sizing [47].…”

Last Mile Logistics Innovations in the Courier-Express-Parcel Sector Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Drones are an even more innovative solution in handling last mile deliveries. However, it can be observed that they have more limitations in use, especially for safety reasons [60]. The limitations are the laws, restrictions on the movement of aircraft (which drones are considered to be) in certain locations, as well as cost effectiveness or simply battery durability [61].…”

A New Way of War: The Swarmers

“…In this sense, the use of UAVs could be useful; just as unmanned systems are already being tested in the civilian world for delivery and medical purposes, drones on the battlefield could provide a viable solution for last-mile delivery, the most dangerous in war. 27 Swarmers could also provide intelligent, cost-effective, human-scale logistics that increase their operational autonomy. It should be evident here that swarmers and drones are not subjects in competition, simply because they would perform different tasks.…”