Yinying Liu, J. Liu, X. Shi, Cheng Tang
Urban logistics systems face growing delivery demand and complex traffic and operational constraints, which make unmanned delivery carriers, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), a promising solution. Existing studies typically focus on a single delivery carrier type and rely on idealized assumptions, overlooking heterogeneous cooperation under multiple stations, multiple time windows, and real-world transport conditions. To address these gaps, we propose the Multi-Station UAV–UGV Cooperative Delivery Scheduling Problem with Temporally Discontinuous Service Availability (MSUUCDSP) to minimize the total travel and waiting time of UAVs and UGVs. To solve the problem, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model with a novel mathematical approach and a Hybrid Large Neighborhood Search (HLNS) algorithm. Additionally, we adopt a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based map-matching method and big data techniques to capture realistic operational characteristics. Computational experiments are conducted on various realistic instances under four diverse scenarios. Results show that UAV–UGV cooperation significantly improves efficiency, reducing total time cost by 17.12% compared with single-mode delivery, and they reveal substantial discrepancies between idealized assumptions and realistic scenarios. We further develop an ArcGIS-based simulation to support practical implementation. The findings provide valuable insights for decision-making and engineering applications for logistics operators.