Autonomous Truck-Drone Delivery for Disaster Relief with a Tabu Search Solution Algorithm

Abstract

Under natural disasters and emergencies, the biggest concern is delivering numerous supplies quickly, properly, and accurately to meet everyone's urgent needs. With the advancement of technologies in vehicles and drones, autonomous Truck-Drone Delivery is emerging as a promising method for delivering emergency supplies; however, efficient algorithms for scheduling and routing activities between autonomous vehicles and drones must be developed. Although various solution algorithms have been proposed under different problem assumptions, the proposed tabu search can efficiently solve the problem. This research aims to develop a model for delivering relief resources using autonomous vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Based on the tabu search algorithm, this research develops a model for the traveling salesman problem with two drones. The results are compared with those of the Gurobi solver for small networks. The proposed tabu search algorithm is then applied to a real city network to illustrate its performance.