Development of a cooperative heterogeneous unmanned system for delivery services

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel concept foran unmanned delivery service using a cooperative heterogeneous unmanned system consisting of a self-driving car and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The proposed concept is suitable to deliver parcels in high-density and high-rise urban or residential areas. In order to achieve the proposed concept, we will develop acooperative heterogeneous unmanned system. Customers can order goods using a smartphone application and the order information, including the position of the customer and the order time, and the package is transported automatically by the unmanned systems. The system assigns the tasks suitable for each unmanned vehicle by analyzing it based on map information. Performance is validated by experiments consisting of autonomous driving and flight tests in a real environment. For more evaluation, the landing position error analysis is performed using circular error probability (CEP).