TY - JOUR
T1 - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Last-Mile Delivery Considering Backhauls
AU - Jeon, Ahram
AU - Kang, Joohang
AU - Choi, Byungil
AU - Kim, Nakyung
AU - Eun, Joonyup
AU - Cheong, Taesu
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant by the Korean Government through Ministry of Science and ICT under Grant No. 2020R1F1A1075832.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for delivery service has been drawing attention in the logistics industry. Since commercial unmanned aerial vehicles have fundamental limitations on payloads and battery capacities, hybrid ground vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicle models have been actively investigated as practical solutions. However, these studies have focused on linehaul (delivery) demands, excluding a large number of backhaul (pickup) demands. If we consider both demands at the same time, an empty unmanned aerial vehicle that finished linehaul service can be immediately used to serve a backhaul customer. In this study, we investigate the differences that arise by considering backhauls as an additional element of the routing problem. A mixed integer linear programming model is developed, and a heuristic is constructed to solve large-scale problems. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, we compare it to existing models using a real-world example. Our solution is also evaluated based on experiments employing a large number of randomly generated datasets.
AB - Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for delivery service has been drawing attention in the logistics industry. Since commercial unmanned aerial vehicles have fundamental limitations on payloads and battery capacities, hybrid ground vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicle models have been actively investigated as practical solutions. However, these studies have focused on linehaul (delivery) demands, excluding a large number of backhaul (pickup) demands. If we consider both demands at the same time, an empty unmanned aerial vehicle that finished linehaul service can be immediately used to serve a backhaul customer. In this study, we investigate the differences that arise by considering backhauls as an additional element of the routing problem. A mixed integer linear programming model is developed, and a heuristic is constructed to solve large-scale problems. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, we compare it to existing models using a real-world example. Our solution is also evaluated based on experiments employing a large number of randomly generated datasets.
KW - Drone
KW - flying sidekick traveling salesman problem
KW - heuristic
KW - mixed integer linear programming
KW - unmanned aerial vehicle
KW - vehicle routing problem with backhauls
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111062412&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3087751
DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3087751
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85111062412
VL - 9
SP - 85017
EP - 85033
JO - IEEE Access
JF - IEEE Access
SN - 2169-3536
M1 - 9449931
ER -