Publication

Towards the deployment of an autonomous last-mile delivery robot in urban areas

Journal Article (2025)

Journal

IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine

Doc link

https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2024.3487321

File

Download the digital copy of the doc pdf document

Abstract

Nowadays, the skyrocketing last-mile freight transportation in urban areas is leading to very negative effects (e.g., pollution, noise or traffic congestion), which could be minimized by using autonomous electric vehicles. In this sense, this paper presents the first prototype of Ona, an autonomous last-mile delivery robot that, in contrast to existing platforms, has a medium-sized storage capacity with the capability of navigating in both street and pedestrian areas. Here, we describe the platform and position it with respect to other existing prototypes, providing its main Software modules and the first validation experiments, carried out in the Barcelona Robot Lab (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya); Esplugues de Llobregat (next to Barcelona); and Debrecen (Hungary), which are representative urban scenarios. In such validations, we focus our analysis on the key localization module, whose errors could cascade down the rest of the navigation pipeline (e.g., planning or control). Aside from robotic technical details, we also include the results of the technology acceptance by the public present in the Esplugues de Llobregat test, collected in situ through a survey.

Categories

mobile robots, service robots, transport control.

Author keywords

Autonomous navigation, robotics, last-mile logistics

Scientific reference

A. Santamaria-Navarro, S. Hernández, F. Herrero, A. López, I. del Pino, N.A. Rodríguez, C. Fernandez, A. Baldó, C. Lemardelé, A. Garrell Zulueta, J. Vallvé, H. Taher, A.M. Puig-Pey, L. Pagès and A. Sanfeliu. Towards the deployment of an autonomous last-mile delivery robot in urban areas. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 2025.