Drone Delivery Global Research Landscape: A Bibliometric Analysis

Background: Rapid technological advancements have revolutionized research into unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, particularly in delivery applications.However, despite numerous related publications, there remains a lack of systematic reviews that synthesize challenges, trends and recent advances in drone delivery.To address this gap, the present study conducts a bibliometric analysis to examine evolutionary trends and emerging applications of UAVs between 2015 and 2024.Objective: This study aims to identify established and emerging trends in drone delivery research by analysing articles, journals, authors, institutions, countries and thematic areas.Methods: Previous studies are selected using a systematic approach, followed by bibliometric analysis with tools including VOSviewer, Bibliometrix and ScientoPy, which emphasizes key authors, top journals and countries, collaboration patterns and recurring author keywords.Results: The bibliometric analysis of 1,438 articles from 583 sources authored by 4,333 scholars (2015-2024) reveals a strong interdisciplinary focus in drone delivery research.Military applications largely drove early studies, but recent breakthroughs highlight the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) for autonomous navigation and energy optimization.Emerging themes include the development of drone swarms for scalable applications such as disaster response and agricultural mapping.Geographically, China, the United States and Australia dominate contributions, with extensive international collaborations fostering global innovation.Across journals and authors, the literature reflects a steady evolution from conceptual and technical foundations to applied studies addressing logistics, smart cities and environmental monitoring.Overall, the results suggest that drone delivery research is transitioning from exploratory phases towards AI-enabled autonomy deployment.Conclusion: Drone delivery research has evolved from military origins into a global, interdisciplinary field driven by AI.China, the USA and Australia are the leading contributors.Its future hinges on balancing technological innovation-such as autonomous navigation and swarm applications-with ethical, regulatory and societal considerations for sustainable integration.