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There May Be a Strong Case for Drone Delivery in Some Environments

• In urban settings and with the drone designs being put forward, increasing the percentage of packages delivered by drone can increase the energy consumed per package delivered substantially — by up to an order of magnitude in some cases. However, the energy per drone-delivered package can be significantly reduced by having many drone centers distributed throughout a city or region instead of using one centralized center.
• Requiring many drone centers has the additional benefits of reducing the size of the fleet, aerial congestion, and the privacy and noise concerns that overhead drones create.
• In some environments, the adverse effects (including energy consumption) appear to be at a level low enough that, when combined with expedited delivery time lines, there can be a strong case for drone delivery.

Delivery drones are being widely developed as a potential way to deliver packages, but their rapidly developing technology and lack of precedent pose challenges to understanding the potential societal impacts. As policymakers sort out their available policy levers, simple city-scale models can help provide a preliminary understanding of the issues. This study develops a series of analytical expressions (equations) that can be used to compare the scale of these challenges and the various trade-offs that exist for city planners, policymakers, logistics companies, and drone designers. These equations can be used to explore the effect on energy consumption, infrastructure requirements, aerial congestion, privacy, and noise for a range of cities and operating conditions. The author finds that, in urban settings and with the drone designs being put forward, one can expect delivery energy to increase by up to an order of magnitude for some cities. In addition, this figure decreases drastically, as does the total number of drones needed for the city, if multiple delivery centers are established instead of one central location. In some environments, the adverse effects (including energy consumption) appear to be at a level low enough that, when combined with expedited delivery time lines, there can be a strong case for drone delivery.

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