Hani Jamjoom, David Lubensky, Justin Manweiler and Justin Weisz
US Patent US9792576
Oct 2017, (Granted)
Abstract. Controlling drones and vehicles in package delivery, in one aspect, may include routing a delivery vehicle loaded with packages to a dropoff location based on executing on a hardware processor a spatial clustering of package destinations. A set of drones may be dispatched. A drone-to-package assignment is determined for the drones and the packages in the delivery vehicle. The drone is controlled to travel from the vehicle's dropoff location to transport the assigned package to a destination point and return to the dropoff location to meet the vehicle. The delivery vehicle may be alerted to speed up or slow down to meet the drone at the return location, for example, without the delivery vehicle having to stop and wait at the dropoff location while the drone is making its delivery.