UAV Scheduling Strategies in Multi-modal Last-Mile Urban Parcel Delivery

Urban parcel delivery has emerged as a high growth market, and the resulting delivery traffic can pose great challenges in dense urban areas. There is growing interest in supplanting the conventional model of a dedicated delivery person operating a van to alternatives featuring new classes of vehicles such as drones, autonomous ground vehicles, cargo bikes and non-motorized vehicles. This work proposes combined delivery strategies using trucks, cargo bikes and drones. We develop and compare multi-modal delivery strategies with various mode combinations. We work on zone-based multi-modal delivery strategies in multi-echelon networks. Then, we evaluate the benefit of multi-modal delivery in both uncongested and congested transportation networks. Results show that delivery models with multiple vehicles modes in both single- and multi- echelon networks are more efficient in terms of total delivery cost than truck only scenario. The multi- modal delivery strategies in two- echelon networks outperform other strategies in extremely congested situations. We suggest taking advantage of synergistic operation among emerging vehicle types, especially drones for more efficient parcel delivery.