The POLIBA team presented a study on ‘Sustainable Last-Mile Delivery with Autonomous Aerial Vehicels and Autonomous Terrestrial Robots: A Case Study’ at the 2025 IEEE Conference of Control, Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT) in Croatia. The paper, drafted under the IN2CCAM project, explores how to leverage cutting-edge technologies for greener, faster and more efficient urban logistics.
A comparative study of delivery strategies
The POLIBA team (project coordinator of the IN2CCAM project), Maria Pia Fanti, Angelina Krendeleva, Bartolomeo Silvestri and Agostino Marcello Mangini carried out an in-depth study to evaluate and compare three autonomous last-mile delivery strategies in an urban setting:
- Drone-only delivery, using autonomous aerial vehicles (1 parcel per trip);
- Robot-only delivery, using autonomous terrestrial robots (3 parcels per trip);
- Hybrid delivery, employing a collaborative fleet of drones and robots.
The scope of the research is to assess which approach minimises total delivery time, offers the lowest operational and environmental cost and is most feasible in real-world urban conditions, accounting for traffic, working hours, payload limits and service time.
Modelling the urban delivery landscape
The study integrates two core tools:
- SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility): Used to stimulate robot movement in real urban traffic conditions.
- Mathematical modelling: Applied to drone delivery for estimating metrics like fleet size, flight time and coverage distance.
Each scenario was assessed using sustainability-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including energy use, emissions, noise, delivery time, and cost.
Key findings
The study’s results show that drone deliveries are a fast option, but imply higher operational costs and environmental drawbacks like noise pollution. Deliveries using robots only proved to be the most cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable, though slower. Based on those insights, the paper concludes that hybrid delivery offered the best trade-off, improving delivery speed while maintaining low cost and positive environmental impact.
Supporting IN2CCAM and the future of CCAM in Europe
This research directly advances the objectives of the IN2CCAM project, which focuses on the integration of CCAM technologies into European cities. By examining autonomous last-mile delivery systems, the study contributes valuable insights into how CCAM innovations can transform urban logistics to support the European Green Deal.
The findings support smarter city planning by demonstrating how automation can ease congestion, reduce emissions, and optimise last-mile logistics. They also inform future CCAM pilot programs, offering a tested framework for sustainable delivery strategy selection.
The paper will be published under the IEEE CoDIT 2025 official proceedings.
