Package Delivery Using Autonomous Drones in Skyways
This work addresses the challenge of efficient and regulated drone delivery for logistics and urban services, but it is incremental as it builds on existing pathfinding methods.
The authors tackled the problem of drone package delivery by proposing a multi-stop service system within a skyway network that accounts for regulations and constraints, and they deployed it in a simulated indoor testbed of Sydney CBD with a GUI for real-time monitoring.
Current drone delivery systems mostly focus on point-to-point package delivery. We present a multi-stop drone service system to deliver packages anywhere anytime within a specified geographic area. We define a skyway network which takes into account flying regulations, including restricted areas and no-fly zones. The skyway nodes typically represent building rooftops which may act as both recharging stations and delivery destinations. A heuristic-based A* algorithm is used to compute an optimal path from source to destination taking into account a number of constraints, including delivery time, availability of recharging stations, etc. We deploy our drone delivery system in an indoor testbed environment using a 3D model of Sydney CBD. We describe a graphical user interface to monitor the real-time package delivery in the skyway network.