Parcel delivery by vehicle and drone

Abstract

We investigate a single-vehicle parcel delivery problem in which customers may be served either by the vehicle or by a portable companion drone launched from the vehicle. The problem may be viewed as a Traveling Salesman Problem with Drone (TSP-D), and is modelled as a 0-1 mixed-integer program (MIP) that synchronizes vehicle and drone operations with the objective of minimizing the duration of the joint tour. Using a combination of valid inequalities, pre-processing, and other bound tightening strategies, we enhance the tractability of the proposed MIP formulation. - 2019, - 2019 Operational Research Society.