Service Network Design with Mixed Autonomous Fleets

This dissertation aims at a service network design problem for the tactical planning of parcel delivery with mixed autonomous fleets. In the first tier of a two-tier city logistics setting, a logistics service provider needs to transport commodities from distribution centers to satellites, i.e., transshipment points distributed within the city.

We consider a heterogeneous infrastructure wherein autonomous vehicles in SAE level 4 may only drive in feasible zones but need to be guided elsewhere by manually operated vehicles with human drivers in platoons. The mixed autonomous fleet is composed of these two vehicle types. The decisions to be taken interfere with the fleet size and mix as well as with the routing of vehicles and commodities.

Methodologically, a mixed integer programming model for service network design is designed for solving the problem. Due to the complexity of the problem a hierarchical decomposition may be developed capable of producing robust solutions under stochastic demand by means of stochastic modelling.