| Summary: | Rising traffic congestion, increasing air pollution and increasing customer
expectations are major challenges for the urban last mile delivery. Drones are
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that can bring relief to the urban delivery sector. UAV
applications are recently gaining more publicity and companies are pushing the
applications of drones in the last mile delivery. The main motivation for
implementation is the opportunity of reducing the delivery cost and delivering items
faster. Optimal route planning for a set of customers that have to be served by the UAV
makes the delivery more efficient and cost-saving. In this dissertation, a practical
application is proposed as Drone Delivery Problems and solved with a written python
script based on the Google OR-Tools that calculates the sequence of customers that
minimizes the distance travelled and satisfies the additional constraints. Three
different scenarios (Travelling Salesman Problem, Vehicle Routing Problem and
Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem) display the capability of the software to find
optimal results. The python script does find an optimal solution to all nine proposed
problems within a certain time limit and without ending in a near-optimal solution.
The second area of research in this thesis is the investigation of the applicability of
current UAV technology in supply chain operations. Most importantly, the UAV
environment has to be adjusted to the needs of this new delivery option. Laws and
regulations are holding back innovative ideas and, in most countries, commercial UAV
use is not permitted.
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