Flying Robots for Safe and Efficient Parcel Delivery Within the COVID-19 Pandemic

The integration of small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) will empower novel smart-city applications and services. After the unforeseen outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public demand for delivery services has multiplied. Mobile robotic systems inherently offer the potential for minimizing the amount of direct human-to-human interactions with the parcel delivery process. The proposed system-of-systems consists of various complex aspects such as assigning and distributing delivery jobs, establishing and maintaining reliable communication links between the vehicles, as well as path planning and mobility control. In this paper, we apply a system-level perspective for identifying key challenges and promising solution approaches for modeling, analysis, and optimization of UAV-aided parcel delivery. We present a system-of-systems model for UAV-assisted parcel delivery to cope with higher capacity requirements induced by the COVID-19. To demonstrate the benefits of hybrid vehicular delivery, we present a case study focusing on the prioritization of time-critical deliveries such as medical goods. The results further confirm that the capacity of traditional delivery fleets can be upgraded with drone usage. Furthermore, we observe that the delay incurred by prioritizing time-critical deliveries can be compensated with drone deployment. Finally, centralized and decentralized communication approaches for data transmission inside hybrid delivery fleets are compared.