3.5 - Assignment: Writing a Research Problem and Hypothesis
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Research Problem and Hypothesis (worth 10%)
In this assignment, we will continue to build upon the foundations laid by the readings and coursework up to this
point. Using the Hunt Library (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., find a minimum of five (5) "ScholarlyPeer Reviewed" articles central to a topic of your choice. These should be different than any articles you have used in
previous modules/assignments. Write an annotated bibliography for these articles according to the guidance in
activity 2.6. Be sure to include an APA formatted reference citation for each article.
Based upon your findings on your topic, write section 1 of a research proposal (as outlined in Chapter 5 of the book) to
include the research problem and hypothesis (and applicable guiding research questions). The section 1 text should be
included in the same document file as the annotated bibliography.
Ideally this is a topic that you may wish to use in other modules or throughout the course, but this is not required.
Use standard file type (.doc or .docx). Save your assignment using a naming convention that includes your first and last
name and the activity number (or description). Do not add punctuation or special characters.
3.5 Assignment: Writing a Research Problem and Hypothesis
Bibliography: Battery Life in Drones Used for Delivering Packages
Source 1
Park, S., Zhang, L., Chakraborty, S. (2017). Battery assignment and scheduling for drone delivery
businesses. 2017 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design
(ISLPED) doi: https://ieeexplore-ieeeorg.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/document/8009165/citations#citations
Summary: The research in this report talks about how drones have been starting to be used in
commercial applications. There are many problems that companies will have to deal with such
as legal, technical, and economical perspective. But something that hasn’t been researched
thoroughly would be the use of batteries for the drones will need. There is battery management
topics that need to be addressed such as the costs, as well as disposable, what type and the aging
of batteries. Battery management will be one of the major factors affecting the time-to-delivery
and profitability of the business. Meanwhile, the state-of-health (SOH) of batteries degrades due
to cycle aging and calendar aging resulting in reduced battery capacity. If their capacity reduces
to a certain threshold, i.e., 80%, they are no longer fit for service, and are retired to be replaced
by equivalent number of new batteries (Park, 2017). They tried experiments that used smaller
batteries for smaller deliveries to save on that if the energy consumption. There will also be
some other incidents that will not allow the batteries to fully charged when a task is requested.
There are going to be a lot of considerations and engineering that are going and you take place in
just in battery usage alone.
Source 2
Stolaroff, J. K., Samaras, C., Emma, R. O., Lubers, A., Mitchell, A. S., & Ceperley, D. (2018).
Energy use and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of drones for commercial package delivery.
Nature Communications, 9, 1-13.
doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1038/s41467-017-02411-5
Summary: To use drones we will need a large network of waystations/charge stations as support
to utilize this technology. That even though it will take less energy to use a drone vs. a delivery
truck the infrastructure is still not quite there to be cost effective. This research article went on
about talking about the differences in the emissions that delivery trucks use compared to the
carbon footprint left behind by using drones. Finding the balance of weight to energy was also
analyzed in this report. There were trying to find where you can have a maximum battery mass
before it becomes counterproductive due to its weight. They conducted tests in major populated
areas like California and that was populated areas like Missouri. Obviously sending drones
produced little to no greenhouse gas emissions they will provide a lower impact on the earth than
our delivery trucks that we currently use. They were very thorough on finding the amount of
energy that is required to use a delivery truck vs. a drone to deliver a package. They did only talk
about the impact of using drones right now and not really discussing the impact beyond the usage
of this technology.
Source 3
SikChang, Y., JungLee, H. (2018). Optimal delivery routing with wider drone-delivery areas
along a shorter truck-route. Expert Systems with Applications, Vol 104, pp 307-317.
Doi:https://www-sciencedirectcom.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/science/article/pii/S0957417418301775
Summary: In this article I found it interesting that you talked more about the routes that a drone
would take for deliveries. They conducted t-test on random delivery locations by clustering the
delivery areas instead of having a longer delivery route. This research article went more in depth
of the cost to deliver a package instead of the impact. The cost to deliver a small parcel within
16.1 km in the USA is $12.92 by UPS ground using next-day delivery, and $8.32 by FedEx
ground. On the contrary, the cost is $1 to deliver a parcel within 30 min using Amazon PrimeAir.
Therefore, the competition for drones to deliver parcels will become more intense in terms of
cost (SikChang & JungLee, 2018). They were also considering the idea of grouping delivery
locations two drones as opposed to having them cover a distance. By creating models and
grouping pickup and delivery areas studies can be conducted on the effectiveness of drone usage
for deliveries. Total delivery time was another factor that they were trying to consider. They did
show that drones can move faster and complete deliveries quicker than trucks even with flight
time constraints. The down fall to this is that they will need more warehouses or receivable
locations for the drones to pick up deliveries due to their limited flights.
Source 4
Chen, M., Lan, Y. (2017). An improved edge recombination algorithm for scheduling problems
of drone package delivery. Journal
Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography, Vol 21, pp 423-426.
doi:https://www-tandfonlinecom.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/doi/abs/10.1080/09720529.2018.1449323
Summary: Getting packages delivered to locations is something that we will always need. This
article talks more about delivery time and the impact that it will have on the delivery companies
like Amazon and DHL. Having packages delivered on time is something that all of us can relate
too. This paper uses a hybrid block-based edge recombination approach to obtain the minimum
delivery time and tardiness for a delivery drone. The hybrid block-based edge recombination
algorithm is a combination of the edge recombination. Then, using the non-dominated-sort
method, the required outputs from that final best chromosome were chosen (Chen & Lan, 2017).
After using their algorithm it was concluded that using drones did allow packages to be deliver it
faster and on time. Many parcel delivery companies are starting to realize the impact that using
drones will have for their business and are trying to utilize this type of technology. This might
be one of those things that if companies don’t embrace it they will probably have difficulty
competing against this new concept.
Source 5
Dorling, K., Heinrichs, J., Messier, G., Magierowski, S. (2016). Vehicle Routing Problems for
Drone Delivery. arXiv:1608.02305. doi:https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.02305
Summary: A large portion of a drone’s weight is the battery itself, which is why it’s such a main
concern with the size of the battery compared to the amount of power consumption that we can
get out of the battery. The article goes on about things to consider if the cost is really worth the
increase of battery weight for a faster delivery? They tried doing a study on using multiple
drones to perform the same the delivery as using one drone that had a bigger battery. It was
concluded that there was not a huge difference in delivery time between the two tests. However
using multiple drones to do the same job is one can cause other conflicts such as airspace and
malfunctions since they will have more moving parts in that delivery process. With the use of
using refueling stations while making deliveries can extend the range of the smaller battery packs
but it will extend the delivery time. It will most likely be up to the individual companies that
will decide on what they want to utilize in this type of technology. Creating an model the will
choose the optimized battery that will be needed to complete each delivery route could be the
answer that we will need to solve this problem.
Figure 1. Power to battery weight.
Section 1
Problem: How is battery life affecting drone usage to deliver packages?
Hypothesis: How do we overcome the limitation and concerns of commercial drones not
operating efficiently?
Assumptions: Some people might have the idea that we have reached the limits to weight to
power ratio. Another problem with drones is that just a small glitch or imperfection can cause
them to crash and we might not have any control on were the crash takes place. So testing this
idea will be difficult to implement in an urban area.
Improvement of the Study: More research will be needed when a small infrastructure is
developed. We will need to compare the different battery sizes and the cost of utilizing
particular drones with the different types of batteries, by doing an ANOVA test to compare the
differences in variance of batteries. It seems that power will always be an issue no matter what
the advancements that we make in battery technology.
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