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With the ongoing expansion of e-commerce, consumers are expecting faster and faster delivery of goods, but delivery companies continue to struggle with last-mile logistics (the final step in delivery to consumers) due to challenges such as complex and inefficient delivery routes. Innovations to mitigate these challenges have been emerging—the use of autonomous delivery robots, for example—but these innovations tend to engender their own complications (e.g., robots travel relatively slowly since they must navigate many ground-level obstacles), leading researchers to conclude that