GENERALIZATION OF A UAV LOCATION AND ROUTING PROBLEM BY TIME WINDOWS

Abstract

In this study we extend and generalize a locating and routing problem for UAVs, with an objective of maximization of the total score collected from interest points visited. By solving the problem we determine simultaneously take-off and landing stations and visit order of interest points for each UAV. The problem is defined by an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation. An ant colony optimization approach is altered for the introduced problem. Computational experiments are performed to compare CPLEX solver and the heuristic. We observe that the heuristic performed well on the experienced instances.