When Drones Take Public Transport: Towards Low Cost and Large Range Parcel Delivery

Though drones have become a promising tool for parcel delivery, due to the limited capacity of the on-board battery, their flight range is constrained. To enlarge the coverage range, the paper proposes a novel method, in which a parcel delivery drone can take a public transportation vehicle and travel on its roof. We investigate how to make use of the public transportation network to route the drone between the depot and a customer. Considering the complexity of the public transportation network, its randomness and time-dependency, instead of off-line planning a global optimal path, an adaptive algorithm is developed. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate how the proposed approach works.