Same-Day Delivery with Drone Resupply

TLDR

Drones are increasingly considered for same‑day home delivery by major retailers and courier firms. The study proposes drone resupply as a novel strategy for same‑day home delivery and formulates a vehicle routing problem to investigate it. The authors model a delivery network where drones resupply trucks when stationary on the roof and evaluate several algorithms for this vehicle routing problem. The results quantify the benefits of drone resupply, offering insights that support its practical adoption.

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, have recently seen an increased level of interest as their potential use in same-day home delivery has been promoted and advocated by large retailers and courier delivery companies. We introduce a novel way to exploit drones in same-day home delivery settings: drone resupply. We consider a home delivery system in which delivery trucks are regularly resupplied by drones. Resupply can take place whenever a delivery truck is stationary and a drone can land on the truck’s roof. We introduce the vehicle routing problem with drone resupply to capture and investigate this setting. We develop different algorithms and compare their performance. Finally, we quantify the potential benefits of drone resupply and generate valuable insights for advancing this concept.