Planning Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft (eVTOL)-Based Package Delivery with Community Noise Impact Considerations

Dr. Bo Zou

Assistant Professor

University of Illinois Chicago

Abstract

The rapid development of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) in recent years suggests a potential to use electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) for package delivery in metropolitan areas. While eVTOL manufacturers and logistics service providers have been actively developing prototype eVTOLs and exploring their potentials in the delivery business, a system thinking about the suitability and ways to operate an eVTOL-based package delivery system remains scarce. A key aspect of the system thinking is the noise impact of eVTOL operations on surrounding communities, which affects public acceptance of eVTOL-based delivery.
In this study, we seek to provide an operational planning framework to prepare AAM to be both economically efficient and community friendly for package delivery. We first develop a method to quantify the community noise impact of an eVTOL operation, based on a proposed “community exposure” measure. Then, a bi-objective integer programming model is formulated which simultaneously optimizes total shipping cost and community noise impact of eVTOL-based operations. The optimization takes into account constraints that may arise from eVTOL-based package delivery including maximum distance for local delivery, package delivery time window, and eVTOL fleet size and carrying capacity. A tailored solution algorithm which augments non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm 2 (NSGA2) with guided generation of initial population of solutions and customized local search heuristics is devised. The model and the algorithm are implemented in a case study in the Chicago metro area. Numerical results reveal the trade-off between the minimization of shipping cost and community noise impact. Several operational insights about eVTOL-based package delivery are obtained. The computational efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are also demonstrated in comparison with alternative solution methods.

Bio

Bo Zou is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago. He has also been a visiting associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Prof. Zou’s research interests focus on technology innovations and their use in and impact on transportation systems. Prof. Zou’s research has been funded by a number of agencies including the World Bank, NSF, NASA, USDOT, and DOE. Currently, he is Director for Technology Transfer and Commercialization for the USDOT-funded Center for Freight Transportation for Efficient & Resilient Supply Chain. Prof. Zou serves a number of roles in the transportation community including as an associate editor for Journal of Air Transport Management and Transportation Letters, an editorial board member of Transportation Research Part B/C/E, and editorial board lead of the TRB Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics (AT015) Committee. Prof. Zou received Ph.D. in civil engineering from UC Berkeley, M.S. in transportation engineering and B.E. in civil engineering from Tsinghua University in China, and Diplôme d’Ingénieur from Ecole Centrale Nantes in France.

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