Autonomous Goods Vehicles for Last-mile Delivery: Evaluation of Impact and Barriers

For transport logistics, often the most inefficient part of the journey is the route between distribution centre and end customer. This route, referred to as last-mile delivery, generally uses smaller goods vehicles, to deliver low-volumes to multiple destinations. To optimise this process, route planning optimisation software is used, to maximise the number of deliveries a driver can complete in a day. To further optimise this process, companies are starting to test autonomous goods vehicles (AGVs). This paper presents an evaluation of the impact and barriers of AGVs for last-mile delivery in the UK, by conducting a study of people in the logistics industry and experts in autonomous technology. Qualitative analysis is used to identify positive and negative impacts of the introduction of driverless AGVs, and barriers, in terms of government policy and technical restrictions, which could slow down wide-scale adoption. From the results, we find logistics companies are being pressured to reduce lead-times and offer more predictable delivery-times. This is increasing pressure on the workforce, which already has high-turnover and difficulties in recruitment. Therefore, AGVs are considered a solution to a present problem, which is preventing logistics companies growing and achieving delivery targets, driven by public demand.