Application of Drone in Solving Last Mile Parcel Delivery

作     者：Jiashi LIU Zhongliang GUAN Jennifer SHANG Xiang XIE 

作者机构：School of Economics and Management Beijing Jiaotong University Joseph M.Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh 

出 版 物：《Journal of Systems Science and Information》 (系统科学与信息学报（英文）)

年 卷 期：2018年第9卷第4期

页      面：302-319页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 082503[工学-航空宇航制造工程] 0825[工学-航空宇航科学与技术] 

基　　金：Supported by China Scholarship Council(201507090026) 

主　　题：drone last mile delivery e-commerce genetic algorithm 

摘      要：The article is about solving the last mile delivery problem in rural town or village. We want to test the drone’s potential in parcel delivery. The objectives are 1) to introduce the cluster and truck-drone in tandem delivery method, 2) to compare the new method with the traditional TSP method in aspect of truck running distance, energy using and time occupation. The parcel delivery demand is sparse, so it is not dense enough for a truck to carry on delivery. We try to identify the best route for the drone to deliver the goods. We use k-mean method to carry on clustering, then we use enumeration method to fulfill the centroids delivery, which comes from the depot. We design a model and calculate the energy, time and distance saving between drone using method(DTSP) and traditional TSP method. The drone attended delivery saves truck delivery distance, energy consumption and *** truck running distance of DTSP method saves 91.87%, the truck running distance is shortened from 189.69 km to 15.4252 km. The DTSP method saves 90.45% of energy. The DTSP method brings a29.75% cutoff in time aspect when there are two drone in running. The research introduces the cluster and TSP combination method, which is a good way to carry on last mile delivery. The result shows a bright future for drone to attend parcel delivery. The e-commerce corporation can apply this method in practice.