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Coordinated Logistics with a Truck and Multiple Sidekicks
DOI:10.1287/trsc.2021.0485.png)
Abstract
En 中文
One of the more novel recent innovations in the logistics world, both in theory and in practice, is the use of small autonomous vehicles to facilitate last-mile delivery. One particular scheme that has received considerable recent attention is the "sidekick" scheme, in which a large cargo truck acts as a mobile "host" that deploys smaller vehicles such as aerial drones or unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). In this paper, we develop a continuous approximation model that estimates the improvements to total completion time that such a system provides in the asymptotic limit as many demand points are drawn from a continuous probability distribution in the plane. Our key finding is that sidekick systems can be beneficial even when the sidekicks are slower than the host, provided there are sufficiently many of them.
Keywords:
drones
continuous approximation
robots
Journal
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4.8
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1.9K
Citations:
8.4K

