Assessing the Feasibility of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Last-Mile Delivery Applications

Abstract

The rapid growth of e-commerce has intensified the need for efficient and sustainable last-mile delivery solutions. UAVs offer significant potential, promising enhanced performance, cost savings, and improved delivery efficiency. This thesis investigates the feasibility of UAVs for last-mile delivery applications through a comprehensive literature review and practical feasibility assessment. The theoretical review synthesizes research across seven research domains: environmental performance, economic impacts, social impacts, policy and regulations, routing and scheduling, charging infrastructure, and energy consumption. This includes in-depth review of 98 relevant articles published during the last 10 years. The analysis highlights that despite UAVs potential benefits, widespread adoption poses challenges, particularly due to regulatory frameworks and technological limitations. To address this, the thesis develops a simulation framework to assess UAV performance under diverse operational conditions. Using 192 simulated delivery missions, the proposed framework evaluates the influence of factors, including wind conditions, payload, and route length on mission feasibility, energy consumption, and GHG emissions. The results showed the prominent effect of wind direction coupled with route direction on mission status and energy consumption. Moreover, the results show that longer routes were more energy efficient despite their higher total energy consumption. Overall, this study contributes to the ongoing UAV research by providing a holistic evaluation of UAVs in last-mile delivery, identifying knowledge gaps, and proposing future research interventions. The integration of theoretical insights with practical simulations highlights the necessity of conducting experimental validation to support UAV adoption in last-mile delivery.