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Same‐day delivery with heterogeneous fleets of drones and vehicles
Author(s) -
Ulmer Marlin W.,
Thomas Barrett W.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
networks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.977
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1097-0037
pISSN - 0028-3045
DOI - 10.1002/net.21855
Subject(s) - drone , context (archaeology) , vehicle routing problem , computer science , constraint (computer aided design) , order (exchange) , routing (electronic design automation) , operations research , function (biology) , transport engineering , business , computer network , engineering , finance , geography , genetics , biology , mechanical engineering , archaeology , evolutionary biology
In this paper, we analyze how drones can be combined with regular delivery vehicles to improve same‐day delivery performance. To this end, we present a dynamic vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous fleets. Customers order goods over the course of the day. These goods are delivered either by a drone or by a regular transportation vehicle within a delivery deadline. Drones are faster, but have a limited capacity as well as require charging after use. In the same‐day context, vehicle capacity is not a constraint, but vehicles are slow due to urban traffic. To decide whether an order is delivered by a drone or by a vehicle, we present a policy function approximation based on geographical districting. Our computational study reveals two major implications. First, geographical districting is highly effective increasing the expected number of same‐day deliveries. Second, a combination of drone and vehicle fleets may significantly reduce the required delivery resources.