The last mile of freight distribution is a critical part of the supply chain because of its significant costs and customers’ increasing expectations from e-commerce and same-day delivery services. Automated technologies in freight transportation represent an opportunity to develop more efficient systems characterized by the integration of different and complementary modes. In this study, we focus on the possibility of implementing an integrated truck-robot system for the last-mile delivery. This typology of problem shares similarities with truck-drone problems, although robots are characterized by much slower speeds and can perform several consecutive deliveries. Based on these particular features, a heuristic that efficiently identifies solutions based on initial truck tours and corresponding joint robot operations is presented. This solution approach leverages a special version of the “Weighted Interval Scheduling Problem,” which allows for a very efficient Dynamic Programming solution. The developed solution approach is adopted to analyze the influence on efficiency of different features concerning the robot’s design and operation, and the surrounding environment. The results show that robot-assisted last-mile delivery systems are quite efficient if robots are employed in heavily congested areas and appropriately retrofitted to accommodate several compartments in the robot’s storage.

货运的最后一英里是供应链的关键部分，因为它的成本高昂，而且客户对电子商务和当日送货服务的期望也越来越高。货运中的自动化技术为开发更高效的系统提供了机会，这些系统的特点是整合了不同和互补的模式。在这项研究中，我们重点关注为最后一英里交付实施集成卡车-机器人系统的可能性。这种问题的类型与卡车无人驾驶问题相似，尽管机器人的特点是速度慢得多，并且可以执行多次连续交付。基于这些特殊功能，提出了一种启发式方法，可根据初始卡车行程和相应的联合机器人操作有效地识别解决方案。该解决方案方法利用了“加权间隔计划问题”的特殊版本，该版本提供了非常有效的动态编程解决方案。采用已开发的解决方案方法来分析与机器人的设计和操作以及周围环境有关的不同功能对效率的影响。结果表明，如果在拥挤不堪的地方使用机器人，并对其进行适当的改装以容纳机器人存储空间中的多个隔间，则机器人辅助的最后一英里传送系统将非常有效。和周围的环境。结果表明，如果在拥挤不堪的地方使用机器人，并对其进行适当的改装以容纳机器人存储空间中的多个隔间，则机器人辅助的最后一英里传送系统将非常有效。和周围的环境。结果表明，如果在拥挤不堪的地方使用机器人，并对其进行适当的改装以容纳机器人存储空间中的多个隔间，则机器人辅助的最后一英里传送系统将非常有效。