Collaborative traveling salesman problem with ground vehicle as a charger for unmanned aerial vehicle

Hyungjoo Cha, Dong Kyun Kim, Joonyup Eun, Taesu Cheong

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Innovation in logistics industry is now implicit, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is at the center of logistics innovation. To effectively utilize unmanned aerial vehicles for last-mile delivery, collaborative delivery using ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles has recently been investigated. However, previous studies neglected proper management of batteries, assuming their constant replacement whenever unmanned aerial vehicles land, and hence numerous batteries are required for unmanned aerial vehicles. Given this research gap, we present a new routing model for collaborative delivery wherein an unmanned aerial vehicle uses a ground vehicle as a power source. A mathematical formulation is presented, and noticing the complexity, a heuristic algorithm is developed. We present a case study to verify the operational efficiency of the model. We test the performance of the heuristic and draw insights based on geographical locations of customers via computational experiments.

Original languageEnglish
JournalTransportation Letters
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2022

Keywords

  • Electric unmanned aerial vehicle
  • Heuristics
  • Mixed-integer linear program
  • collaborative delivery
  • traveling salesman problem

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Transportation

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