A computer system for ranking potential attended delivery/pickup locations is disclosed. In various embodiments, a user or computer system identifies an area in which to establish at least one attended delivery/pickup location. In a particular embodiment, the system receives data associated with potential attended delivery/pickup locations (e.g., attended delivery/pickup location candidates), including the specific characteristics of those candidates. The system then, based at least in part on the characteristics of each of the attended delivery/pickup location candidates, ranks the attended delivery/pickup location candidates and displays the rankings to a user for use in selecting the most suitable candidate for the area.

A system for determining and executing an autonomous-vehicle vehicle travel route, including a hardware-based processing unit and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. The storage medium includes an input-interface module that, when executed by the hardware-based processing unit, obtains factor data indicating factors relevant to determining a vehicle travel route. The storage medium also includes a route-generation module comprising a route-complexity sub-module. The route-complexity sub-module determines, based on the factor data, route-complexity indexes corresponding to respective optional routes. The route-generation module determines the vehicle travel route based on the route-complexity indexes. The storage in various embodiments includes other sub-modules associated with other elements, such as autonomous-driving safety, comfort, stress, pollution, scenery, or infrastructure-accessibility, for determining and executing an autonomous-driving travel route. In some embodiments, the storage includes an autonomous-driving perceptions module and an autonomous-driving control module for modifying vehicle functions in executing the autonomous-driving travel route.

An online agricultural system manages and optimizes interactions of entities within the system to enable the execution of transaction and the transportation of crop products. The online agricultural system accesses historic and environmental data describing factors that may impact crop product transactions and/or transportation to determine market prices for crop products and crop product transportation. Responsive to receiving a request from an entity, the online agricultural system determines an optimal transaction for the entity, such as a price for selling a crop product, an available crop product for purchase, or a transportation opportunity to transport a crop product.

A system includes storage compartments, each of the storage compartments being configured to store shipments and having a locking mechanism and a computing system that controls operations of the storage compartments. The computing system performs: receiving a request from a providing entity to reserve a portion of the storage compartments, obtaining identification information of a requesting entity requesting a shipment from the providing entity, generating a scannable code; transmitting the scannable code and the identification code of the requesting entity to the providing entity, determining a compartment of the storage compartments to be reserved to temporarily store the shipment, detecting a scan of the scannable code or an input of the identification code on a computing device at a terminal of a location of or adjacent to the reserved determined compartment, and in response to detecting the scan or the input of the identification code, opening the reserved determined compartment.

A delivery method for a traveling vehicle using a drone includes: transmitting, by an orderer, first information including position information of a vehicle to a server and providing, by the server, a position and an inventory of service providers, which correspond to the first information including the position information of the vehicle, to the orderer; requesting, by the server, service provision to the service provider; transmitting, by the service provider, second information including article preparation information to the server; transmitting, by the server, third information including a plurality pieces of receipt position information, which corresponds to the first information including the position information of the vehicle and the second information including the article preparation information, to the orderer; transmitting, by the orderer, a value selected by receiving the third information including the plurality pieces of receipt position information to the server; transmitting, by the server, the selected value to a selected service provider; loading, by the selected service provider, an article of the orderer on a drone and instructing the drone to move to correspond to the third information including the plurality pieces of receipt position information; and receiving, by the orderer, the ordered article.

A computer system can estimate preparation times associated with items offered by a plurality of entities to manage a service over a given geographic region. The computer system can receive, from a user device of a user, a request that indicates a user selection of a first set of one or more items to be provided by a first entity and a second set of one or more items to be provided by a second entity. The network system can determine a route of travel for a service provider to navigate in fulfilling the request. The route of navigation can be determined based at least in part on a first set of preparation timing information associated with the first set of one or more items and a second set of preparation timing information associated with the second set of one or more items.

A shipping management system comprises a memory configured with a set of carrier-specific mapping rules for a plurality of carriers. The system includes a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising a set of instructions executable by a processor to: apply carrier-specific mapping rules to carrier-specific records received from the respective carrier to map status codes or descriptions in the carrier-specific records from the respective carrier to generate normalized shipping information for shipments, the normalized shipping information comprising normalized status codes; store the normalized shipping information in association with the user account; receive a request for shipments associated with the user account; and generate an unified view user interface to present a unified view of shipments associated with the user account, the unified view comprising normalized statuses or descriptions for shipments across the plurality of carriers and controls to allow a user to request additional data on individual shipments.

An approach is provided for generating delivery data models for aerial package delivery. The approach involves determining at least one delivery surface data object to represent one or more delivery surfaces of at least one delivery location, wherein the one or more delivery surfaces represents at least one surface upon which to deliver at least one package. The approach further involves causing, at least in part, a creation of at least one complete delivery data model based, at least in part, on the at least one delivery surface data object to represent the at least one delivery location. The approach further involves causing, at least in part, an encoding of at least one geographic address in the at least one complete delivery data model to cause, at least in part, an association of the at least one complete delivery data model with at least one geographic location.

Provided are various mechanisms and processes for optimizing real-time, on-demand delivery service for perishable goods. In one aspect, a method is provided for aggregating on-demand deliveries using a depot dispatch protocol. The method comprises dispatching runners to pick up on-demand orders for drop off at a depot where the orders are aggregated and batched based on optimized delivery routes and destination proximities. Batches of orders are then assigned to couriers who may arrive at the depot to receive the batched orders without having to navigate through areas of high congestion. Such delivery routing system may be implemented alongside a delivery tracking system for generating estimated time of arrival predictive updates for real-time delivery of perishable goods.

Systems and methods which provide for exposing alternate shipping service provider services in shipping management systems are described. Embodiments provide a generic alternate carrier component used to configure configured alternate carrier components of carrier support logic for exposing corresponding alternate shipping service providers for selection and use by users of a shipping management system. A generic alternate carrier component may be configured for a respective alternate shipping service provider for interfacing selected carrier shipping services offerings supported by the alternate shipping service provider with a shipping management platform of a shipping management system. Carrier support modules may be provided for each shipping service provider of a plurality of shipping service providers, wherein the carrier support modules may be configured to interface services logic for a corresponding shipping service provider with a shipping management platform using one or more configured alternate carrier components.