Flying Sidekick Traveling Salesman Problem with Pick-Up and Delivery and Drone Energy Optimization

This paper considers a mixed integer linear programming model that aims to minimize the total cost of routing a truck-drone tandem while considering pickup and delivery operations. In addition, the model proposes a new approach for battery swapping that optimizes drone energy replenishment. The model is validated through different scenarios with varying cost and network parameters to observe whether the corresponding changes in the system are logical. The results were able to show that the proposed battery swap approach improved the solution obtained in the context of a min-cost model. In addition, increasing the drone-truck speed ratio was observed to reduce the total cost incurred in routing the truck-drone tandem on a network.