Franz Kopica, Walter Morales and Cristina Olaverri-Monrea l Automated delivery of shipments in urban areas
Fully automated delivery of goods in urban areas with small hybrid or electric vehicles can reduce CO2 emissions in cities. We contribute to the “last mile and city logistics” topic by proposing a case study for an autonomous logistics system for delivering packages and mail. For this purpose, electric vehicles and standardized autonomous transport boxes are used. The operator at the distribution center (DC) keeps track of vehicles and transport boxes based on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) information. The boxes are equipped with Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that contain a microchip to store and retrieve the information from the inventory database records in the central operating platform. Through RFID the recipient is informed about the delivery and then authorized to open the transport box with a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled smartphone which sends a text message to the operator.