Drone Technology in Transportation Management: A Systematic Review and Framework for Future Research

Abstract

This study examines the current state of the drone technology literature in detail, both academically and industrially. It describes the advantages and disadvantages of drones in the use of logistics activities, the methods used in the studies and the gaps in the literature. In addition, this study aims to reveal the academic efforts about drone-based transportation systems that will have a say in the future and which areas require effort in the future. In this article, a systematic literature review (SLR) about the use of drones in the transportation industry has been carried out. In total, 56 articles published in Elsevier's Scopus, Thomson Reuter's Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and ScienceDirect (Elsevier) databases were examined in detail. The findings show that the use of drones in transportation activities is an effective method. However, the fact that it is a technology that has just been integrated into business processes reveals that there are aspects that need to be developed. Especially in the last ten years, they found that businesses have benefited from drone technology in their transportation activities that increased their last mile delivery speed, efficiency, accessibility and customer satisfaction.