2021 Volume 14 Pages 30-39
Drone is one of the promising vehicles that have exhibited the potential to reduce the cost and time in the field of logistics. However, due to the limitation of battery capacities, the flight time remains short. Therefore, energy consumption is one of the most critical concerns in drone delivery services. In order to reduce the energy consumption, drone generally needs to fly to the destination in as short a time as possible. For delivery services, the drone has loads to deliver and is exposed to weather effects such as windy conditions. This paper studies a routing problem for energy minimization of delivery drones under the assumption of windy conditions. This paper formally defines Energy Minimizing Vehicle Routing Problem (EMVRP) under windy conditions. Experimental scenarios with different wind velocities and the number of customers have been simulated, and demonstrate a comparison of the metrics in the energy consumption and the flight distance.
