Carbon emissions reductions in last mile and grocery deliveries utilizing air and ground autonomous vehicles

The rapid growth of e-commerce and package deliveries across the globe is demanding new solutions to meet customers’ desire for more and faster deliveries. New driverless air and ground vehicles are being launched and tested to deliver products or services in the areas of retail, groceries, and healthcare. This research focuses on the efficiency of autonomous (driverless) air and ground delivery vehicles in terms of vehicle-miles, energy consumption, and CO(2) emissions. Three types of autonomous vehicle are analyzed: drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sidewalk autonomous delivery robots (SADRs), and road autonomous delivery robots (RADRs). The CO(2) emissions of these autonomous vehicles are compared against emissions from an electric van (e-van), a conventional internal combustion engine van, and driving to a store utilizing electric and conventional vehicles. The impacts of vehicle capacity, range, and time constraints are analyzed as well as the impacts of number of deliveries, service time, area of service, and depot-service area distance. Novel results are found regarding the efficiency of each vehicle type and tradeoffs between driving to a store and store delivery as a function of order size and type of vehicle driven by consumers.