• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.106-116
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• 2021

This paper considers a joint problem for blood inventory planning at hospitals and blood delivery planning from blood centers to hospitals, in order to alleviate the blood service imbalance between big and small hospitals being occurred in practice. The joint problem is to determine delivery timing, delivery quantity, delivery means such as medical drones and legacy blood vehicles, and inventory level to minimize inventory and delivery costs while satisfying hospitals' blood demand over a planning horizon. This problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming model by considering practical constraints such as blood lifespan and drone specification. To solve the problem, this paper employs a Lagrangian relaxation technique and suggests a time efficient Lagrangian heuristic algorithm. The performance of the suggested heuristic is evaluated by conducting computational experiments on randomly-generated problem instances, which are generated by mimicking the real data of Korean Red Cross in Seoul and other reliable sources. The results of computational experiments show that the suggested heuristic obtains near-optimal solutions in a shorter amount of time. In addition, we discuss the effect of changes in the length of blood lifespan, the number of planning periods, the number of hospitals, and drone specifications on the performance of the suggested Lagrangian heuristic.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.495-519
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• 2023

The drone serves the customers not served by vans. At the same time, considering the safety, policy and terrain as well as the need to replace the battery, the drone needs to be transported by truck to the identified station along with the parcel. From each such station, the drone serves a subset of customers according to a direct assignment pattern, i.e., every time the drone is launched, it serves one demand node and returns to the station to collect another parcel. Similarly, the truck is used to transport the drone and cargo between stations. This is somewhat different from the research of other scholars. In terms of the joint distribution of the drone and road vehicle, most scholars will choose the combination of two transportation tools, while we use three. The drone and vans are responsible for distribution services, and the trucks are responsible for transporting the goods and drone to the station. The goal is to optimize the total delivery cost which includes the transportation costs for the vans and the delivery cost for the drone. A fixed cost is also considered for each drone parking site corresponding to the cost of positioning the drone and using the drone station. A discrete optimization model is presented for the problem in addition to a two-phase heuristic algorithm. The results of a series of computational tests performed to assess the applicability of the model and the efficiency of the heuristic are reported. The results obtained show that nearly 10% of the cost can be saved by combining the traditional delivery mode with the use of a drone and drone stations.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2016.04a
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• pp.168-170
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• 2016

Drone package delivery routing problem is realistic problem used to find efficient route of drone package delivery service. In this paper, we present an approach for solving drone routing problem for package delivery service using two different heuristics algorithms, genetic and nearest neighbor. We implement and analyze both heuristics algorithms for solving the problem efficiently with respect to cost and time. The respective experimental results show that for the range of customers 10 to 50 nearest neighbor and genetic algorithms can reduce the tour length on average by 34% and 40% respectively comparing to FIFO algorithm.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.204-209
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• 2016

In this paper, an unmanned delivery service using drone was proposed and verified the feasibility. The multicopter has GPS for autopilot and a camera for remote control by human operator. The gripper for manipulation of delivery object was designed and evaluated. The multicopter flies to a given position automatically based on GPS, and approaches to the prepared delivery desk by remote control of human operator using the received image from the multicopter. GPS sensor verification and experimental PID tuning were performed to ensure the flight stability. The flight tests were carried out to verify the feasibility of delivery service.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.915-920
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• 2015

Recently, many companies try to offer various services using drones. Especially, the drone delivery system is a good example. However, the drone delivery service has some problems since the heavy parcels flies over the people walking down streets, so many things must be considered such as dropping mails by collision of drones. To resolve the problem, in this paper, a inter-drone network communication will be used to design the topology and to simulate in the Opnet simulator for the performance evaluation. Additionally, the topology with random mobility of trajectory of drones is also designed and simulated for the result.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.141-150
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• 2023

Currently, various companies are actively participating in research and development of drone delivery services. Existing studies do not comprehensively provide integrated functions for future drone delivery services such as mission automation, customer verification, and overcoming performance limitations, which can lead to high manpower demand, reduced user service trust, and potentially overloading low-end devices. Therefore, this study proposes a drone mission automation system (DMAS) using EdgeCPS technology to provide the three aforementioned functions in an integrated manner. Real-world experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed system, demonstrating that the DMAS components operate according to the specified roles in the delivery scenario. In addition, the system achieved user verification with a similarity of more than 90% in the process of receiving the product, and verified a faster inference speed and a lower resource share than the existing method.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.393-418
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• 2023

Drones are increasingly used in logistics delivery due to their low cost, high-speed and straight-line flight. Considering the small cargo capacity, limited endurance and other factors, this paper optimized the pickup and delivery vehicle routing problem with time windows in the mode of "truck+drone". A mixed integer programming model with the objective of minimizing transportation cost was proposed and an improved adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm is designed to solve the problem. In this algorithm, the performance of the algorithm is improved by designing various efficient destroy operators and repair operators based on the characteristics of the model and introducing a simulated annealing strategy to avoid falling into local optimum solutions. The effectiveness of the model and the algorithm is verified through the numerical experiments, and the impact of the "truck+drone" on the route cost is analyzed, the result of this study provides a decision basis for the route planning of "truck+drone" mode delivery.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.25-39
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• 2016

The drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle which has no human pilot. Drones can be classified into military drones, commercial drones, and personal drones by usage. Also, drones can be classified from large-sized to nano-sized drone by size and autonomous, remote controlled drone by control type. Especially, military drones can be classified into low-altitude drones, medium-altitude, and high-altitude drones by altitude. Recently, the drone industry is one of the fast growing industries in the world. As drone technologies have become more advanced and cost-effective, Korean government has set its goal to become a top-level country in drone business. However, the government's strict regulation for drone operations is one of the biggest hurdles for the development of the related technologies in Korea and other countries. For example, critical problems for drone delivery can be classified into technical issues and institutional issues. Technical issues include durability, conditional awareness, grasp and release mechanisms, collision avoidance systems, drone operating system. Institutional issues include pilot and operator licensing, privacy rules, noise guidelines, security rules, education for drone police. This study analyzes the trends of the drone industry from the viewpoint of technology and regulation. Also, we define the business areas of drone utilization. Especially, the drone business types or models for public sector are proposed. Drone services or functions promoting public interests need to be aligned with the business reference model of Korean government. To define ten types of drone uses for public sector, we combine the business types of government with the future uses of drones that are proposed by futurists and business analysts. Future uses of drones can be divided into three sectors or services. First, drone services for public or military sectors include early warning systems, emergency services, news reporting, police drones, library drones, healthcare drones, travel drones. Second, drone services for commercial or industrial services include parcel delivery drones, gaming drones, sporting drones, farming and agriculture drones, ranching drones, robotic arm drones. Third, drone services for household sector include smart home drones.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.160-167
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• 2023

This study focuses on the development of a Last-Mile delivery service using unmanned vehicles to deliver goods directly to the end consumer utilizing drones to perform autonomous delivery missions and an image-based precision landing algorithm for handoff to a robot in an intermediate facility. As the logistics market continues to grow rapidly, parcel volumes increase exponentially each year. However, due to low delivery fees, the workload of delivery personnel is increasing, resulting in a decrease in the quality of delivery services. To address this issue, the research team conducted a study on a Last-Mile delivery service using unmanned vehicles and conducted research on the necessary technologies for drone-based goods transportation in this paper. The flight scenario begins with the drone carrying the goods from a pickup location to the rooftop of a building where the final delivery destination is located. There is a handoff facility on the rooftop of the building, and a marker on the roof must be accurately landed upon. The mission is complete once the goods are delivered and the drone returns to its original location. The research team developed a mission planning algorithm to perform the above scenario automatically and constructed an algorithm to recognize the marker through a camera sensor and achieve a precision landing. The performance of the developed system has been verified through multiple trial operations within ETRI.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.225-232
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• 2022

Recently, unmanned logistics delivery systems, such as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, written as drone below) and autonomous robot delivery systems, have been implemented in many countries due to the rapid development of autonomous driving technology. The development of these new types of advanced unmanned logistics delivery systems is essential not only to become a leading logistics company but also to secure national competitiveness. In this paper, the application of the unmanned logistics delivery system was investigated in terms of market trends, overall technology level of last mile delivery drone and autonomous delivery robot. The direction of response to changes in the last mile delivery service market was checked through a comparison of the technological level between domestic companies that produce last mile devices and advanced foreign companies. As a result of this technology level analysis, the difference between domestic companies and advanced companies was shown using tables and figures to show their relative levels. The results of this analysis reflect the opinions of experts in the field of last-mile delivery technology. In addition, the technology level of unmanned logistics delivery systems for each country was analyzed based on the number of related technology patents. Lastly, insights for the technology level analysis of unmanned last mile delivery systems were proposed as a conclusion.