A Robust Dynamic Planning Method for Truck-Drone Delivery under Uncertainty
R.C.C. van Ewijk (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Joost Ellerbroek – Mentor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
J. M. Hoekstra – Mentor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
Calin Andrei Badea – Mentor
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Abstract
The use of drones in combination with a delivery truck can have a significant impact in improving the efficiency of last-mile delivery. Drones can be dispatched to customers from the truck, allowing the truck to continue delivering packages at the same time. This approach gives rise to the widely researched Traveling Salesman Problem with multiple Drones (TSP-mD). Numerous heuristic models have been developed to solve the problem in a near-optimal manner. However, these optimization strategies do not account for disruptions, which are common in delivery networks and can negatively impact their performance. While existing literature usually considers static models, a more dynamic approach could address these disruptions by adapting to real-time circumstances. To explore this, a dynamic method is developed in this paper for solving the TSP-mD. Its efficiency is compared to an existing static heuristic model from the literature. The comparison is performed in the BlueSky Open Air Traffic simulator, in which disruptions are introduced, such as truck delays and drone speed variations. Experiments in this environment demonstrate that the existing algorithm consistently achieves shorter mission completion times across all uncertainty settings. However, the newly developed method shows a significant improvement in performance under uncertain conditions. Therefore, the use of global optimization for the TSP-mD should be reconsidered.