Traveling salesman problem with drone under recharging policy

Eş Yürek E., Özmutlu H. C.

COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS, vol.179, pp.35-49, 2021 (SCI-Expanded)

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 179
  • Publication Date: 2021
  • Doi Number: 10.1016/j.comcom.2021.07.013
  • Journal Name: COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, PASCAL, Aerospace Database, Applied Science & Technology Source, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, Computer & Applied Sciences, INSPEC, Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Metadex, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.35-49
  • Bursa Uludag University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

The traveling salesman problem is one of the most studied problems in combinatorial optimization. An

emerging variant of this problem, which is referred to as the traveling salesman problem with drone, focuses

on deploying a drone and a delivery truck for last-mile delivery. This problem coordinates the truck and

drone deliveries in both time and location because the drone requires the truck to refresh its battery and load

the next customer’s package on the drone. Previous studies assume that the drone battery is swapped with

a new/fully recharged battery at the end of each drone flight. In contrast, this study investigates a flexible

recharging policy. For this purpose, we develop a new mixed integer linear programming formulation into

which remaining battery level consideration is incorporated. A computational study is provided to compare

the recharging policy with the battery swapping policy in terms of delivery time. Due to the complexity of

the problem, a heuristic approach is proposed to solve medium-sized instances.