Civil engineering students secure future Christmas packages

At Christmas time, it is important that parcels arrive on time. But delivering packages to sparsely populated areas can be costly for both companies and the environment. Computer engineering students at Luleå University of Technology have developed a digital solution for parcel deliveries that reduces transportation costs and environmental impact. The solution also means that companies that use it do not have to share business sensitive data.

Transport has a major environmental impact, while large areas outside major cities have a low level of service. Today, two different companies can transport half-full trucks to the same destination. It is more efficient, both economically and environmentally, if one company rents space in the other truck so that it is full.

The problem is that companies are reluctant to share data about their operations with other companies, which is necessary to coordinate delivery. The beauty of the students' solution is that companies only share competitively neutral data with each other.

Parcel lockers and software

The solution is based on a combination of parcel lockers and web-based software. Parcel lockers already exist today. They are a series of unmanned cabinets stacked on top of each other. The supplier locks a parcel in one of the lockers and sends an unlock code to the recipient.

Using the students' solution, companies can either coordinate their transportation from the starting point or company A can deliver the parcel to a parcel box where company B picks it up. The software can also be used by private individuals.

“Say you live in Luleå and are going to visit your grandmother who lives in a small village in the Norrbotten hinterland. You log in with your user ID and see that there is a package in Luleå to be delivered to a parcel locker in your grandmother's village. You get an unlock code, pick up the package and deliver to the parcel locker. Afterwards, you get paid by the transportation company”, explains Anton Follinger, one of the students behind the invention.

The system is designed to protect the privacy of those involved. The supplier only has access to the information needed to carry out its mission, and only for the duration of the mission. Any user can see that a parcel with a certain ID is in transit and which companies or individuals are involved in the transport. However, it is not possible to see between which locations the package is being transported. So, for example, it is not possible to map the competitor's transportation routes. The private supplier's unique user identity ensures that the money ends up with the right person or can be traced if they have misbehaved.

Developing soft values

“During the course of the project, we have learned a lot of cool techniques, such as block-chain, cyber neutrality and decentralized systems. But working with the soft values in the group and with our project managers has been equally stimulating.”

The students have developed the solution in a project course within the framework of the Master of Science in Computer Engineering program. The project is a sub-project of a larger research project in the Information Systems research subject in collaboration with the Innovation and Entrepreneurship research subject. The researchers in the project, who have also been the students' supervisors, are so pleased with the results that they have bought the license rights to further develop the solution.

“The students have been very good at understanding and analyzing the underlying problem. They have been incredibly self-motivated and provided us researchers with different options throughout the project. While they have been working on this, the students have found issues that we researchers had not thought of,” says Magdalena Pfaffl, Associate Senior Lecturer in Information Systems.

• Read more about the Master of Science in Computer Engineering
• Find out more about the research project.