| Consumers increasingly expect immediate or same-day delivery when shopping online.The survey found that delivery speed accounted for 52% of customers’ online purchase decisions.Online retailers are constantly trying breakthrough methods to improve logistics speed to achieve fast last-mile logistics delivery.It is against this background that unmanned vehicle delivery continues to rise.However,despite the maturity of the technology,unmanned vehicle delivery has not really achieved large-scale commercialization in recent years.Therefore,it is important to promote the development of unmanned vehicle delivery practice by optimizing the operations management.In addition,the traditional centralized delivery model(orders are delivered to the end distribution station by couriers one by one)cannot achieve the goal of fast delivery.Therefore,the challenge for online retailers is to implement autonomous vehicle delivery services at lower cost and faster without adding last-mile distribution centers.To help online retailers to implement unmanned vehicle delivery correctly,scientifically,and effectively,this study discusses the optimization of unmanned vehicle delivery operations from a theoretical perspective and combines it with practical problems.The main research contents of this study are as follows:(ⅰ)This paper first considers the issue of allocation of delivery capacity for online retailers,i.e.,how online retailers can share unmanned delivery vehicles with logistics robotics companies.This paper develops an unmanned vehicle delivery capacity sharing model consisting of an online retailer and a logistics company.Using the newsvendor model,the optimal delivery capacity of the online retailer under different scenarios is obtained.We find that if the online retailer wants to secure more unmanned vehicle delivery capacity in advance,it should use the bidirectional option;otherwise,the unilateral option.Signing a bidirectional option can increase the flexibility of the online retailer.(ⅱ)Then,this paper considers the sharing strategy of unmanned vehicle delivery capability under the sharing platform.This paper analyzes a logistics robot sharing platform composed of logistics robot companies and customers who need to rent robots,and develops a theoretical model to study the pricing strategy based on the sharing platform.We find that a high service response speed does not necessarily benefit the platform.In addition,when customers are sensitive to the additional services,despite the increased cost of providing additional services,the platform can still profit from them.(ⅲ)Next,this paper analyzes the delivery area,delivery price,and delivery capacity when the unmanned vehicle performs the delivery task alone.A joint optimization model is established for a two-stage unmanned vehicle delivery area-delivery price-delivery capacity.When considering the time constraints of unmanned vehicle delivery,if the travel time of consumers from home to the pickup location is long,the service distance should be set to ensure that everyone can go to the pickup location to pick up the goods.(ⅳ)Finally,this paper analyses the delivery area,delivery price,and delivery capacity when unmanned vehicles and trucks collaborate to perform delivery tasks.A two-stage joint unmanned vehicle and truck collaborative delivery area-delivery pricedelivery capacity optimization model is developed.The service distance constraint and service time constraint of unmanned vehicle delivery are considered in the model.In the autonomous vehicle-truck collaborative delivery model,regardless of the constraints,the increase in the unit travel cost of consumers and the arrival rate of consumers will cause retailers to reduce the price of unmanned delivery services.In addition,if the service distance constraint is the primary consideration strategy,then the collaborative delivery should charge a higher delivery price,but the delivery area is relatively small.If the service time constraint is the primary consideration,the collaborative delivery should charge a higher delivery price,but the two delivery modes can perform the same delivery area.The main innovations of this study are:(ⅰ)This study addresses new scientific questions arising from the development of unmanned delivery in practice,such as how online retailers deploy their delivery capacity.(ⅱ)This study considers a new scenario for logistics robot sharing models,i.e.,sharing strategies for logistics robots based on sharing platforms.Unlike current research on sharing platforms,this study considers the impact of platform service quality(exogenous and endogenous quality decisions)on logistics robot sharing from two perspectives when considering platform decisions.(ⅲ)This study investigates the delivery area optimization problem of unmanned vehicles from a new perspective.The current regional optimization problem for unmanned vehicle delivery mainly starts with vehicle path and sequencing problems.In this study,the service radius of the unmanned delivery service is studied from the perspective of establishing a model based on continuous functions and formulating a joint optimization strategy of delivery area-delivery price and delivery capacity.There are 19 figures,11 tables,and 167 references in this paper. |
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