2021/09/03 by Lavinia Amorosi, Amorosi, Lavinia, Justo Puerto +3
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Engineering · #Combinatorics (math.CO) #FOS: Mathematics #Facility Location and Emergency Management #Optimization and Control (math.OC) #Optimization and Search Problems #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #UAV Applications and Optimization #Vehicle Routing Optimization Methods
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2109.01447
openalex publication_date 2021/09/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper considers the optimization problems that arise to coordinate a tandem between a mothership vehicle and a fleet of drones. %more than one drone. Each drone can be launched from the mothership to perform an operation. After completing the operations the drones return to the mothership to recharge batteries and to be ready for a new operation. Operations consist on (partially) visiting graphs with given lengths to deliver some service or to perform some surveillance/inspection activity. The goal is to minimize the overall weighted distance traveled by the mothership while satisfying some requirements in terms of percentages of visits to the target graphs. In all cases, we develop exact formulations resorting to mixed integer second order cone programs that are compared on a testbed of instances to assess their performance. We also develop a matheuristic algorithm that provides reasonable solutions. Computational experiments show the usefulness of our methods in different scenarios.