A preliminary study to optimise safety conditions on a freight urban robotic vehicle

Abstract

The paper presents a new concept architecture of light duty fully electric vehicle for efficient sustainable urban freight transport which allows the movement of two Euro Pallets 800 × 1200 mm (or boxes with similar bottom part). Active suspensions of the vehicle have been designed in order to adapt their stiffness to the payload on board and to modify the chassis height during loading-unloading tasks. In this paper, a preliminary study to optimise safety conditions on goods on board of the vehicle, and on people near the vehicle is presented. In order to guarantee safety conditions for the vehicle's driver and city areas where the vehicle should be moved, design optimisations on the chassis have been developed. These optimisations have been compared using computational analysis. Two alternative solutions have been proposed and one of the presented results has been included on the real vehicle.In industrialised countries, the number of studies and surveys in the field of urban goods movement (UGM) has increased considerably over recent years. Ambrosini and Routhier (2004) compare the objectives, methods and results in this sector and focuses on nine industrialised countries of Europe, America and Asia. Cooperative action seems to bear fruit providing that information and dialogue take place in the long-term with all the operators involved. The development of intelligent transport systems (ITS) and better management of urban facilities may improve these attempts.De Jong et al. (2004) present a review of the literature on freight transport models, focusing on the types of models that have been developed since the 1990s for forecasting, policy simulation and project evaluation at the national and international levels.Dablanc (2007) presents three characteristics of urban goods movements in major European cities: (1) Goods movements are largely indifferent to the internal structure of cities.(2) Urban policies targeted on freight mobility appear to be quite inefficient. (3) The provision of appropriate urban logistic services is slow in emerging despite growing needs. These features have been observed around from 2001 to 2006 through working with large metropolitan transport authorities, as well as with the French national research program on "Goods in Cities" and the "Best Urban Freight Solutions" European network. These observations draw a picture of the urban freight industry, which can appear quite critical.Browne et al. (2010) provide a review of the light goods vehicle (LGV) fleet and its activity, with specific reference to operations in urban areas, and sustainability issues associated with the ever-growing use of LGVs. Traditionally these vehicles have received little attention but are becoming an ever-more important element of urban freight transport both for goods collection and delivery and for the provision of a wide range of critical services.Freight transport is a critical issue for urban areas: the population is becoming more and more concentrated in cities and therefore the bulk of industrial product...

Integration of Urban Freight Innovations: Sustainable Inner-Urban Intermodal Transportation in the Retail/Postal Industry

“…The results of the topics identification are reported in Table 2. Taxi logistics Applied the taxi to transport goods; the purpose is reduce traffic congestion [80][81][82][83][84] Cargo bike Use of a cargo-bike for freight distribution in city centers [85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98] Robotic vehicles Use of autonomous (robotic) vehicles for freight distribution in city areas [99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107] Delivery drones Use of drones for freight delivery in city areas [108][109][110][111] Parcel lockers…”