Power Optimization of Urban Logistics with Autonomous Delivery Robots

Adoption of autonomous vehicles is growing globally, and autonomous delivery robots are a promising choice for the last-mile delivery in place of conventional vehicles. Delivery companies are likely to invest in technology that improves delivery productivity as customer expectations of delivery times continue to rise and e-commerce sales continue to accelerate. This work relies on a simulation-optimization approach to determine the optimal number of the robot hubs to serve a given delivery order demand. The optimization aims at minimizing facility set up costs, operational costs and robot energy consumption to allocate the customer demands to facilities and dimension the robot fleet to deliver packages efficiently. The simulation model reproduces the parcel delivery and the robot battery consumption and charging cycles.