On the Regulatory Framework for Last-Mile Delivery Robots

Abstract

Autonomously driving delivery robots are developed all around the world, and the first prototypes are tested already in last-mile deliveries of packages. Estonia plays a leading role in this field with its, start-up Starship Technologies, which operates not only in Estonia but also in foreign countries like Germany, Great Britain, and the United States of America (USA), where it seems to provide a promising solution of the last-mile problem. But the more and more frequent appearance of delivery robots in public traffic reveals shortcomings in the regulatory framework of the usage of these autonomous vehicles—despite the maturity of the underlying technology. The related regulatory questions are reaching from data protection over liability for torts performance to such mundane fields as traffic law, which a logistic service provider has to take into account. This paper analyses and further develops the regulatory framework of autonomous delivery robots for packages by highlighting legal implications. Since delivery robots can be understood as cyber-physical systems in the context of Industry 4.0, the research contributes to the related regulatory framework of Industry 4.0 in international terms. Finally, the paper discusses future perspectives and proposes specific modes of compliance.

Innovative Management of Common-Pool Resources by Smart Contracts

“…The coordination and optimisation of downstream flows of materials and upstream flows of information and finance of a supply chain represent a challenging task due to complex and distributed structures of stakeholder and inter-company business processes. With the growing importance of Industry 4.0, the traditional SCM topics are mapped into the sphere of smart manufacturing and logistics so that the SCM challenges are getting smarter, more fragmented and distributed and new concepts like self-organising, fractal structures, M2M systems as well as networked cyber-physical systems dominating the scientific discussion (Olaniyi & Reidolf, 2015;Hoffmann & Prause, 2018). These new smart SCM structures strengthen the part of distributed and commonly used resources with supply chains together with questions evoking governance and management issues.…”

“…These original principles of Elinor Ostrom lied the ground for further research and have been slightly modified, expanded and adapted to unique features in order to integrate additional variables to master and model self-organised governance systems. Currently, scholars emphasise blockchain technologies for the facilitation of entrepreneurial collaboration and the management of common-pool resources in the context of networks and supply chains to solve and overcome obstacles related to fragmentation and distributed structures (Norta et al 2014;Hoffmann et al 2018).…”

“…This self-organised management of common-pool resources requires a multi-level approach, comprising an operative, a collective and a constitutional level necessary for the users to keep cooperation and self-organisation (Ostrom 1990(Ostrom , 2009. These principles can be transferred to GTC governance and implemented by blockchain technology (Prause, 2018;Philipp et al, 2019).…”

Grocery Delivery or Customer Pickup—Influences on Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions in Munich

“…Especially, refrigeration of the vehicle stowage is not considered. Applying (13), the specific final energy consumption can be calculated…”

Grocery Delivery or Customer Pickup - Influences on Energy Consumption and CO₂ Emissions in Munich

“…In addition to electric delivery vehicles, they reviewed the use of bicycles and tricycles as well as smaller commercial vehicles as alternative. Moreover, autonomous delivery vehicles are developed, but the legal situation still has to be clarified for a future productive use [12]. In general, the use of intermodal transportation or a shift to other transportation modes offer a chance to influence the environmental aspects of deliveries [13].…”