Mathematical Investigation on the Sustainability of UAV Logistics
1
Graduate School of Management of Technology, Korea University, 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, Korea
2
Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, Kyung Hee University, 1732 Deogyeong-daero, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do 17104, Korea
3
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Hansung University, 116 Samsungyoro16-gil, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02876, Korea
4
Department of Industrial Engineering, Kangwon National University, 1 Kangwondaehak-gil, Gangwon-do 24341, Korea
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 5932; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11215932
Received: 19 September 2019 / Revised: 21 October 2019 / Accepted: 23 October 2019 / Published: 25 October 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Feasibility for Sustainability)
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to make groundbreaking changes in the logistics industry. Leading logistics companies have been developing and testing their usage of UAVs recently as an environmentally friendly and cost-effective option. In this paper, we investigate how much the UAV delivery service is environmentally friendly compared to the traditional ground vehicle (GV) delivery service. Since there are fuel (battery) and loadable weight restrictions in the UAV delivery, multi-hopping of UAV is necessary, which may cause a large consumption of electrical energy. We present a two-phase approach. In Phase I, a new vehicle routing model to obtain optimal delivery schedules for both UAV-alone and GV-alone delivery systems is proposed, which considers each system’s restrictions, such as the max loadable weight and fuel replenishment. In Phase II, CO2 emissions are computed as a sustainability measure based on the travelling distance of the optimal route obtained from Phase I, along with various GV travel-speeds. A case study finds that the UAV-alone delivery system is much more CO2 efficient in all ranges of the GV speeds investigated.
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Keywords:
sustainability of unmanned aerial vehicles; green vehicle routing; unmanned aerial vehicle logistics
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Eun, J.; Song, B.D.; Lee, S.; Lim, D.-E. Mathematical Investigation on the Sustainability of UAV Logistics. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5932.
AMA Style
Eun J, Song BD, Lee S, Lim D-E. Mathematical Investigation on the Sustainability of UAV Logistics. Sustainability. 2019; 11(21):5932.
Chicago/Turabian StyleEun, Joonyup; Song, Byung D.; Lee, Sangbok; Lim, Dae-Eun. 2019. "Mathematical Investigation on the Sustainability of UAV Logistics" Sustainability 11, no. 21: 5932.
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