Review of Navigation Methods for UAV-Based Parcel Delivery

This paper presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art navigation methods available for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used in parcel delivery. Particularly, the paper focuses on state-of-the-art sensor configurations, multi-sensor data fusion architectures, and their performance when employed for UAV navigation. Additionally, this paper presents the associated safety regulations for UAV navigation currently imposed by regulatory bodies in US and Canada. The existing navigation solutions sometimes produce degenerative results due to GPS loss, multipath signals, spoofing events, and other sensor degradation scenarios. Therefore, this article investigates the suitability of integrating visual lidar odometry and mapping (VLOAM) with GPS to overcome the limitations of existing navigation solutions. A comparative study of the multi-sensory combined solutions is presented with numerical simulations, validating the regulatory compliance of VLOAM and GPS integrated system under common GPS failure cases. Note to Practitioners—This work was motivated by the need for a survey on existing UAV navigation methods for parcel delivery applications. Different UAV navigation methods exist, depending on the sensors used and the sensor fusion architectures, with varying degrees of localization accuracy. It can be challenging for researchers and practitioners to decide which method to adopt for their application while complying with the existing safety regulations. Therefore, this paper presents an overview of the current safety regulation for UAV navigation and evaluates the state-of-the-art navigation methods against regulatory safety compliance. Additionally, a numerically validated safe navigation method is suggested for UAV-based parcel delivery. This paper provides researchers and practitioners with comprehensive reference sources in the UAV navigation field, which can help them develop suitable solutions to ensure safe navigation.