Open AccessOptimal and heuristic algorithms for the multi-objective vehicle routing problem with drones for military surveillance operations
Author(s) -
Namsu Ahn,
Soochan Kim
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of industrial and management optimization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.325
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1553-166X
pISSN - 1547-5816
DOI - 10.3934/jimo.2021037
Subject(s) - drone , heuristic , computer science , routing (electronic design automation) , vehicle routing problem , simple (philosophy) , mathematical optimization , scale (ratio) , function (biology) , algorithm , artificial intelligence , mathematics , computer network , philosophy , genetics , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , biology
During military operations, obtaining information on remote battlefields is essential and recent advances in unmanned aerial vehicle technology have led to the use of drones to view battlefields. However, the use of drones in military operations introduces the new problem of determining travel routes for the drones. This type of problem is similar to the well-known classical vehicle routing problem, but the main difference is its objective function. For maintenance purposes, a minimized difference in travel distances is preferred. In addition, obtaining a shorter route in terms of travel distance is important. In this research, we propose a mathematical formulation and an optimal algorithm for the problem and suggest a simple heuristic to handle the large size instance of the problem. The computational results indicate that this algorithm can solve the real-scale instances of the problem, and the heuristic exhibits good performance even when the instance size of the problem is large.