Last mile urban freight delivery: A new system based on platoons of automated vehicles

In this paper, a new transport system for city logistics, based on automated vehicles, is presented. This system aims to address the UDC localization problem. Deliveries are performed by platoons of electric and automated vehicles in which the leading one is driven while the others move driverless. Each platoon travels from the Urban Distribution Centre (UDC) to a specific place on the border of the city centre, named Split Up Location (SUL), where the platoon is divided. Then each vehicle, except the leading one, carries out the last mile deliveries in an automated way. During this time, the driver can relocate where required. After finishing deliveries, vehicles come back to the same SUL and reassemble in a platoon, then the platoon comes back to the UDC. The system design has been addressed as a two-echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with satellites, where SULs play the role of satellites and the UDC plays the role of the depot. Thanks to the fact that SULs have a fixed position, they are located in strategic positions of the urban area, it has been possible to simplify this problem and sub-divide it into two sub-problems: a minimum path problem from the UDC to SULs, and a multi-depot CVRP (Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems) from SULs to receivers, where SULs play the role of depots. A simulator modelizes the activities of each platoon, each vehicle and each driver and it allows to evaluate, dynamically, the number of vehicles required to operate the system and the timetable of driver activities. The proposed transport system provides significant savings in terms of: energy consumption, CO2 and PM10 emissions, and costs. These savings are also due to the UDC utilization that allows a strong reduction in the number of delivery trips, thanks to a reorganization of packages in order to increase the vehicle load factor. However UDCs still record a low usage: as a result, policies of public administrations should be oriented to improve the UDC utilization.