Designing a drone delivery network with automated battery swapping machines

Drones are projected to alter last-mile delivery, but their short travel range is a concern. In this study, we propose a drone delivery network design using automated battery swapping machines (ABSMs) to extend ranges. The design minimizes the long-term delivery costs, including ABSM investment, dro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers & operations research 2020-12, Vol.129
Main Authors: Cokyasar, Taner, Dong, Wenquan, Jin, Mingzhou, Verbas, İsmail Ömer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
drone delivery
ENERGY STORAGE
mixed-integer nonlinear programming
network optimization
queueing theory
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Drones are projected to alter last-mile delivery, but their short travel range is a concern. In this study, we propose a drone delivery network design using automated battery swapping machines (ABSMs) to extend ranges. The design minimizes the long-term delivery costs, including ABSM investment, drone ownership, and cost of the delivery time, and locates ABSMs to serve a set of customers. We build a mixed-integer nonlinear program that captures the nonlinear waiting time of drones at ABSMs. To solve the problem, we create an exact solution algorithm that finds the globally optimal solution using a derivative-supported cutting-plane method. To validate the applicability of our program, we conduct a case study on the Chicago Metropolitan area using cost data from leading ABSM manufacturer and geographical data from the planning and operations language for agent-based regional integrated simulation (more commonly known as POLARIS). A sensitivity analysis identifies that ABSM service times and costs are the key parameters impacting the long-term adoption of drone delivery.
ISSN:0305-0548
1873-765X