The two-echelon routing problem with truck and drones
This addresses logistics optimization for parcel delivery by integrating drones with trucks, but it is incremental as it builds on existing two-echelon routing problems.
The paper tackles the two-echelon routing problem using a truck and drones to minimize completion time, proposing MILP models for small instances and a GRASP metaheuristic for larger ones, with experimental results analyzed on various contexts.
In this paper, we study novel variants of the well-known two-echelon vehicle routing problem in which a truck works on the first echelon to transport parcels and a fleet of drones to intermediate depots while in the second echelon, the drones are used to deliver parcels from intermediate depots to customers. The objective is to minimize the completion time instead of the transportation cost as in classical 2-echelon vehicle routing problems. Depending on the context, a drone can be launched from the truck at an intermediate depot once (single trip drone) or several times (multiple trip drone). Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models are first proposed to formulate mathematically the problems and solve to optimality small-size instances. To handle larger instances, a metaheuristic based on the idea of Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) is introduced. Experimental results obtained on instances of different contexts are reported and analyzed.