Last mile delivery Optimisation model for drone-enabled Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

In light of e-commerce's exponential growth trajectory over recent years, it has never been more critical to evaluate the last-mile delivery segment for its efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Autonomous vehicles (drones) offer considerable promise as potential solutions with ongoing investigations into emerging technologies in this context. To address problems related to last mile-delivery in logistics operations, the practicality of adopting a hybrid truck-drone delivery system is examined through this study. The researchers utilized Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP)and Gurobi optimization solvers both for optimizing performance as well as facilitating execution. While testing a drone dataset of a well-known logistics company as part of their research using an optimization model, the findings suggested that were remarkable competitive advantages including significant gains in reduction of timing. Nevertheless, there are several constraints like maintenance, recharging, difficult weather conditions & traffic congestion-necessitating focused innovative AI-based approaches. In spite of these impediments, a hybrid truck-drone’s potential applicability can remarkably boost the efficiency of last-mile delivery operations.