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Dynamic programming approaches for the traveling salesman problem with drone
Author(s) -
Bouman Paul,
Agatz Niels,
Schmidt Marie
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
networks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.977
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1097-0037
pISSN - 0028-3045
DOI - 10.1002/net.21864
Subject(s) - drone , travelling salesman problem , truck , computer science , mathematical optimization , dynamic programming , traveling purchaser problem , 2 opt , operations research , mathematics , engineering , algorithm , aerospace engineering , genetics , biology
A promising new delivery model involves the use of a delivery truck that collaborates with a drone to make deliveries. Effectively combining a truck and a drone gives rise to a new planning problem that is known as the traveling salesman problem with drone (TSP‐D). This paper presents exact solution approaches for the TSP‐D based on dynamic programming and provides an experimental comparison of these approaches. Our numerical experiments show that our approach can solve larger problems than the mathematical programming approaches that have been presented in the literature thus far. Moreover, we show that restrictions on the number of locations the truck can visit while the drone is away can help significantly reduce the solution times while having relatively little impact on the overall solution quality.