Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Delivering Parcels Modeled as a Vehicle Routing Problem Estimated to Lead to Productivity and Environmental Benefits.
Nationwide, United States
Impact of UAV Delivery on Sustainability and Costs under Traffic Restrictions
Summary Information
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) can perform parcel delivery tasks with less energy consumption and less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional delivery services, thereby offering environmental benefits. Another advantage of UAVs is that they can bypass congested traffic. Given this view, this study proposed a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to efficiently solve the complex parcel routing problem with UAV either minimizing total cost or CO2 emissions, and an experimental analysis was conducted to illustrate the algorithm.
METHODOLOGY
The study used a computer programming software tool to carry out an experiment and test the UAV routing model and GA with two restrictions: 1) deliveries are assumed to be completed within one working day consisting of eight hours, and 2) fuel consumption or CO2 emission are minimized. The experiment assumed 20, 200, 300, and 400 customers in different scenarios, a range of one-10 pounds for parcel size and a 10-mile or less delivery distance. A 2019 study was used as reference for parameters pertaining to UAV versus truck delivery, such as vehicle weights, speeds, traffic congestion indices, travel costs, etc., to perform comparative calculations. A 2018 study was used as a reference to obtain energy and CO2 emission rates.
FINDINGS
| Reduction in CO2 (%) | Reduction in total cost (%) | |
| 200-customer | 9.20 | 6.65 |
| 300-customer | 19.67 | 48.28 |
| 400-customer | 10.62 | 34.23 |
