Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2501.14325

Joint Infrastructure Planning and Order Assignment for On-Demand Food-Delivery Services with Coordinated Drones and Human Couriers

Yang Liu·Yitong Shang·Sen Li
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

This paper investigates the optimal infrastructure planning and order assignment problem of an on-demand food-delivery platform with a mixed fleet of drones and human couriers. The platform has two delivery modes: (a) ground delivery and (b) drone-assisted delivery (i.e., air delivery). In ground delivery, couriers directly collect and transport orders from restaurants to destinations. For air delivery, the delivery process involves three legs: initially, a human courier picks up the order from the restaurant and transports it to a nearby launchpad, where personnel load the orders onto drones and replace batteries as needed. The loaded drone then transports the order from the launchpad to a kiosk, where another courier retrieves the order from the kiosk for final delivery. The platform must determine the optimal locations for launchpads and kiosks within a transportation network, and devise an order assignment strategy that allocates food-delivery orders between ground and air delivery considering the bundling probabilities of ground deliveries and the waiting times at launchpads and kiosks. We formulate the platform's problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear program and develop a novel neural network-assisted optimization method to obtain high-quality solutions. A case study in Hong Kong validates our model and algorithm, revealing that drone delivery reduces operational costs, minimizes courier fleet size, and increases order bundling opportunities. We also find that the expansion of air delivery services may entail larger delivery times due to the trade-off between the travel time savings induced by the faster air delivery and the associated detours incurred by intermodal transfer and extra waiting times at launchpads and kiosks, which crucially depends on the distance of the orders and the sequence of activating long-distance air delivery routes versus short-distance ones.

Explore related subjects

eess.SYcs.SYmath.OC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Yang Liu, Yitong Shang, Sen Li. 2025-01-24. Joint Infrastructure Planning and Order Assignment for On-Demand Food-Delivery Services with Coordinated Drones and Human Couriers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14325

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Constrained Feedback Control of Nonlinear Systems via Approximate HJB and Control Barrier Functions

This paper presents a two-stage framework for constrained feedback control of input-affine nonlinear systems. Offline, an approximate value function for the unconstrained problem is computed, for example using Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman (HJB)-based policy iteration. Online, the proposed quadratic program (QP) minimizes the pre-Hamiltonian evaluated using the approximate value-function gradient subject to safety constraints enforced by control barrier functions (CBFs). This architecture decouples performance optimization from constraint enforcement, allowing constraints to be modified without recomputing the value function. As in CBF-QP architectures based on control Lyapunov functions (CLFs), safety is enforced as a hard constraint; however, the performance objective targets approximate optimality rather than a prescribed Lyapunov decay. Numerical results on a linear 2-state hovercraft and a nonlinear 9-state spacecraft attitude-control problem show agreement with the constrained open-loop optimal control problem (OCP) benchmark in the linear case, and performance close to the OCP benchmark, improving on CLF-based controllers, in the nonlinear case.

eess.SY↗
arXiv2026

Rao-Blackwellized Stein Gradient Descent for Joint State-Parameter Estimation

We present a filtering framework for online joint state estimation and parameter identification in nonlinear, time-varying systems. The algorithm uses a Rao-Blackwellization technique to infer joint state-parameter posteriors efficiently. In particular, conditional state distributions are computed analytically via Kalman filtering, while model parameters, including the measurement-noise covariance, are approximated using particle-based Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD), enabling stable real-time inference. To handle parameters subject to physical constraints, we further introduce constrained variants that enforce them through an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) splitting of the SVGD update, including nonlinear equality constraints that standard particle filters cannot readily handle. We derive a stability bound that relates the approximation error in the parameter posterior to the resulting error in the marginal state distribution. Performance of the proposed filters is validated on three case studies: a fed-batch bioreactor with Haldane kinetics and a damped pendulum, both under physical constraints, and a neural-network-augmented dynamic system. The examples cover parameter estimation under inequality and equality constraints and online neural-network training within a dynamical model.

eess.SY↗
arXiv2026

Firing Rate Neural Network Implementations of Model Predictive Control

Human and animal brains perform planning to enable complex movements and behaviors, a process that can be effectively described using model predictive control (MPC). How could the brain physically implement MPC? In this work, we translate model predictive controllers into firing rate neural networks, offering insights into the nonlinear neural dynamics that underpin planning. We propose a constructive method; no training is required. This is done first applying the projected gradient method to the dual problem to derive a baseline neural network implementation. We then use factorization and contraction analysis to systematically generate alternative network architectures; in other words, we systematically generate hypotheses for how planning is done in the brain via neural dynamics. Finally, we present numerical simulations to study different neural networks performing MPC to balance an inverted pendulum on a cart (i.e., balancing a stick on a hand), including one example in which imposing sparse connectivity (a property observed in brain networks) does not degrade control performance.

eess.SY↗