Delivery overview
Delivery is a type of routing problem that’s applicable to use cases such as food and beverage delivery and ride sharing. In typical delivery scenarios:
- Requests or stops include pickups and dropoffs
- Routes are often made in real time and can change
- Vehicles may start and end their routes at different locations
This tutorial provides a walkthrough of setting up a basic delivery scenario and includes a sample JSON input file to serve as a starting point. You can use the input file directly in the Nextmv Cloud console or with the Nextmv Cloud API.
Delivery defaults
The defaults for a delivery scenario often include defining vehicle shift start and end, vehicle speed, and stop duration. Specific properties applied to the stops and vehicles override default settings. Learn more about input schema defaults.
Field name | Notes |
---|---|
start | Starting position representing a depot or warehouse |
shift_start | Time that a vehicle shift begins |
shift_end | Time that a vehicle shift ends |
speed | Average speed in meters per second |
stop_duration | Estimated amount of time in seconds to service a stop |
Delivery vehicles
Most delivery scenarios typically start with values defined for vehicle id
and capacity
. Latitude and longitude can be defined for a start
location. If one isn’t provided, the vehicle starts its route at the first stop.
Field name | Notes |
---|---|
id | Name or identifier for a given vehicle |
capacity | Available vehicle space for arbitrary entities (e.g., maximum weight, volume, etc. of a given vehicle) |
Delivery stops
Most delivery scenarios typically start with values defined for stop id
, position
, and quantity
. The quantity
value in this case can be positive or negative, indicating an increase or decrease in vehicle capacity when it services that stop.
Field name | Notes |
---|---|
id | Name or identifier for a given stop |
position | Coordinates for a given stop |
quantity | Arbitrary entities for transport (e.g., the weight, volume, etc. of a given stop), can be positive or negative value |
Delivery next steps
The Nextmv Cloud API is extremely flexible. There are many ways you can configure the input file to represent more complex business logic using penalties, time windows, and compatibility attributes.
Sample delivery input data
The following is a complete sample of input data you can use with the Nextmv Cloud console or Nextmv Cloud API to get started with a basic delivery scenario.