Drone Delivery Scheduling by a Genetic Algorithm: Simultaneous Optimization for Multiple Different Numbers of Drones

Hazama, Yohei; Iima, Hitoshi; Karuno, Yoshiyuki

doi:10.1541/ieejeiss.142.499

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Hazama et al (2021) proposed an application of the genetic algorithm to the underlying parcel delivery model. Afterward, Hazama et al (2022) discussed another application of the genetic algorithm in order to address some of the numbers of available drones simultaneously in the search process, and Kataoka et al (2022) applied the framework of the genetic algorithm proposed in Hazama et al (2021) to the underlying parcel delivery model with setup times for sorties. It is remarkable that the underlying parcel delivery model involves an aspect of the scheduling problem of minimizing the makespan on parallel identical machines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drone scheduling for parcel delivery with an access grade to stops on a fixed truck route

YAMADA,

KARUNO,

KATAOKA

et al. 2024

JAMDSM

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In this paper, we consider a parcel delivery scheduling problem of minimizing the total duration for a truck-drone distribution system to serve a given set of customers. The single carrier truck plays the role of a mobile depot of multiple identical drones, and the drones with unit capacity perform the last-mile delivery from the carrier truck to each customer. An ordered set of truck stops for launching/retrieving drones is also given, and it constitutes a fixed route of the carrier truck. For the last-mile delivery of a drone to a customer, the launching stop and the retrieving stop of the drone must be the same. We newly introduce an integral parameter of access grade to an underlying parcel delivery model in order to obtain a flight time bound for each customer. By the flight time bound as a threshold, the given set of truck stops is partitioned into two disjoint subsets, namely sets of nearer stops and of farther stops. The carrier truck is required to choose a stop from the set of nearer stops for launching a drone to each customer. The access grade of nearer stops yields a generalized parcel delivery model, since it involves the case with a sufficiently large bound on the flight time as the underlying parcel delivery model with no access restriction to truck stops. In this paper, we first review an integer programming (IP) formulation of the underlying parcel delivery model, and then we modify it into the generalized version with the access grade of nearer stops. We also conduct numerical experiments to demonstrate the solution quality of the generalized version by utilizing an IP solver, and report the results.

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