Priority-Driven Instant Delivery System with Drone Resupply

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) resupply mode offers a viable alternative to parcel delivery by replenishing ground vehicles at intermediate open-space supply points. Usually, orders are treated as equally important with no guarantees of on-time delivery. In this paper, we propose a priority based delivery framework to efficiently manage real-time delivery demands with varying priorities. Specifically, this framework integrates a fleet of UAVs for resupply and trucks for final delivery. By considering the inherent priority of orders and their elapsed waiting time, a dynamic priority discipline is introduced and customized to different order contexts. This approach ensures that urgent orders are prioritized to ensure timely fulfillment within their deadlines, while low-prioritized orders can still be completed without excessive waiting. Simulations using a real-world city map of Helsinki, along with mobility features of both trucks and UAVs, show significant performance gains over baseline schemes in terms of on-time delivery rate, average delivery time, and waiting fairness among all orders.