Holistic Service Provisioning in a UAV-UGV Integrated Network for Last-Mile Delivery

Effective last-mile delivery is pivotal in smart logistics system. While existing delivery network architectures, such as Drone-as-a-Service (DaaS), are capable of enhancing order delivery effectiveness, they often fall short in provisioning diverse delivery services. Furthermore, DaaS-based last-mile delivery systems face challenges from limited payload capacity and range. In this paper, we propose a UAV-UGV integrated network architecture based on Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), denoted as DaaS+, encompassing the diverse delivery services from both Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) for last-mile delivery. To optimize the effectiveness in the delivery process, the intricate overhead and constraints of heterogeneous delivery services are taken into the full consideration. Specifically, we present an energy-aware service model for the UAV-UGV integrated network that considers the deadline constraints of services. Additionally, we address issues of service unavailability during service provisioning. To identify optimal service provisioning plans, we design a novel Energy-Aware Holistic Service Provisioning Mechanism based on Particle Swarm Optimization (ES-PSO), which minimizes delivery energy consumption while adhering to service deadline constraints. Experimental results substantiate the effectiveness of our proposed solution, demonstrating its ability to generate superior service provisioning plans and significantly reduce total delivery energy consumption.