Facility location decisions for drone delivery: A literature review

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive literature survey on facility location problems for drone (uncrewed vehicle) delivery, where either (i) drones are the only vehicles, or (ii) drones and other vehicles (e.g., trucks) work together for delivery, but drones do not ride in or on the other vehicles. The main goals of this review are to identify and categorize fundamental facility location problems associated with drone delivery, to document the large volume of research in this area, to provide a connection between the studies from different research fields that consider similar location problems, and to highlight promising areas for future research. We first discuss and classify the functions of drones and the various types of facilities used for drone and hybrid vehicle-drone (e.g., truck and drone, or transit and drone) delivery systems, including drone bases (fixed or temporary), other vehicle bases, recharging stations, (re)supply points, and platooning points. The literature is reviewed and categorized based on the types of vehicles involved and their interactions, the types of facilities located, the types of drones and the location space (discrete or continuous). Each category is analyzed in terms of the modeling approach, decision(s), the objective function(s), constraint(s) and additional feature(s). The paper concludes with some promising future research directions.