Amazon Last Mile Routing
Research Challenge
Supported by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics
The Problem
Despite tremendous advances in route optimization over the last decades, there remains an important gap between theoretical route planning and real-life route execution: in real-life operations, the quality of a route is not exclusively defined by its theoretical length, duration, or cost. Experienced delivery drivers have tacit knowledge about the complex operational environment in which they serve customers on a daily basis. To allow for safer, more efficient, and sustainable last-mile delivery, it is critical to leveraging this tacit information for improved route planning.
The Objective
The primary goal of the Last Mile Routing Research Challenge is to encourage participants to develop innovative approaches leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and other non-conventional methods to produce solutions to the route sequencing problem that outperform traditional, optimization-driven operations research methods in terms of solution quality and computational cost.
What’s at stake?
Cash Prizes
A total of US$175,000 in prizes
Publications
MIT CTL will publish and promote top-rated entries through its network of affiliates, peer-reviewed challenge proceedings, industry publications, blog posts, and social networks
Recognition
Participants will receive a certificate of participation signed by the VP of Amazon Logistics and the Director of MIT CTL
Career Development
Top performing teams may be interviewed by Amazon for research positions in the last mile organization and be invited to present their work at MIT CTL
Stay informed
Be first in line when the next registration opens and get the latest updates.
The key dates for the 2021 Last Mile Routing Research Challenge are:
February 22, 2021
Participant registration opens
March 15, 2021
Research period starts (data and instructions released)
March 29, 2021
Participant registration closes
May 15, 2021
Optional deadline for participants to submit their preliminary models and obtain feedback on their performance
June 18, 2021
Final submission deadline
July 2, 2021
Deadline to submit a short technical article describing participant submissions
July 30, 2021
Winners will be announced by Amazon