Delivery robots as a solution for the last mile in the city?

Abstract

Urban freight transport is assuming an increasingly important role in the field of urban mobility as well as in urban transport policy, as e-commerce is booming: with the advance of digitalization, goods are increasingly being ordered via the internet, with a resulting sharp increase in delivery transport volumes (cf. Muschkiet/Schückhaus 2019: 358; German Federal Government 2019: 44f.). New sustainable solutions and concepts are therefore needed in urban logistics, with the last mile in particular posing a major challenge due to a lack of bundling and the great effort involved (cf. Gerdes/Heinemann 2019: 399; Buthe et al. 2018: 30; Lierow/Wisotzky 2019). At the same time, new delivery media are emerging, such as delivery robots (cf. Baum et al. 2019: 2455; Jennings/ Figliozzi 2019: 317), which are seen as having great potential for the last mile.