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Two echelon vehicle routing problem with drones in last mile delivery

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  • Kitjacharoenchai, Patchara
  • Min, Byung-Cheol
  • Lee, Seokcheon

Abstract

In recent years, drone routing and scheduling has become a highly active area of research. This research introduces a new routing model that considers a synchronized truck-drone operation by allowing multiple drones to fly from a truck, serve one or multiple customers, and return to the same truck for a battery swap and package retrieval. The model addresses two levels (echelons) of delivery: primary truck routing from the main depot to serve assigned customers and secondary drone routing from the truck, which behaves like a moveable intermediate depot to serve other sets of customers. The model takes into account both trucks' and drones’ capacities with the objective of finding optimal routes of both trucks and drones that minimizes the total arrival time of both trucks and drones at the depot after completing the deliveries. The problem can be solved by formulated mixed integer programming (MIP) for the small-size problem, and two efficient heuristic algorithms are designed to solve the large-size problems: Drone Truck Route Construction (DTRC) and Large Neighborhood Search (LNS). Numeric results from the experiment compare the performance of both heuristics against the MIP method in small/medium-size instances from the literature. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to show the delivery time improvement of the proposed model over the previous truck-drone routing models.

Suggested Citation

  • Kitjacharoenchai, Patchara & Min, Byung-Cheol & Lee, Seokcheon, 2020. "Two echelon vehicle routing problem with drones in last mile delivery," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:225:y:2020:i:c:s0925527319304335
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.107598
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Nils Boysen & Stefan Fedtke & Stefan Schwerdfeger, 2021. "Last-mile delivery concepts: a survey from an operational research perspective," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 43(1), pages 1-58, March.
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    4. Peng, Xiaoshuai & Zhang, Lele & Thompson, Russell G. & Wang, Kangzhou, 2023. "A three-phase heuristic for last-mile delivery with spatial-temporal consolidation and delivery options," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    5. Rave, Alexander & Fontaine, Pirmin & Kuhn, Heinrich, 2023. "Drone location and vehicle fleet planning with trucks and aerial drones," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(1), pages 113-130.
    6. Raeesi, Ramin & Zografos, Konstantinos G., 2020. "The electric vehicle routing problem with time windows and synchronised mobile battery swapping," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 101-129.
    7. Zhou, Hang & Qin, Hu & Cheng, Chun & Rousseau, Louis-Martin, 2023. "An exact algorithm for the two-echelon vehicle routing problem with drones," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 124-150.
    8. Amine Masmoudi, M. & Mancini, Simona & Baldacci, Roberto & Kuo, Yong-Hong, 2022. "Vehicle routing problems with drones equipped with multi-package payload compartments," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    9. Jiang, Jie & Dai, Ying & Yang, Fei & Ma, Zujun, 2024. "A multi-visit flexible-docking vehicle routing problem with drones for simultaneous pickup and delivery services," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(1), pages 125-137.
    10. Loske, Dominic & Klumpp, Matthias, 2021. "Human-AI collaboration in route planning: An empirical efficiency-based analysis in retail logistics," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    11. Li, Hongqi & Chen, Jun & Wang, Feilong & Bai, Ming, 2021. "Ground-vehicle and unmanned-aerial-vehicle routing problems from two-echelon scheme perspective: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(3), pages 1078-1095.
    12. Yin, Yunqiang & Li, Dongwei & Wang, Dujuan & Ignatius, Joshua & Cheng, T.C.E. & Wang, Sutong, 2023. "A branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm for the truck-based drone delivery routing problem with time windows," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(3), pages 1125-1144.
    13. Alfandari, Laurent & Ljubić, Ivana & De Melo da Silva, Marcos, 2022. "A tailored Benders decomposition approach for last-mile delivery with autonomous robots," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 299(2), pages 510-525.
    14. Liu, Dan & Yan, Pengyu & Pu, Ziyuan & Wang, Yinhai & Kaisar, Evangelos I., 2021. "Hybrid artificial immune algorithm for optimizing a Van-Robot E-grocery delivery system," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    15. Zhao, Lei & Bi, Xinhua & Li, Gendao & Dong, Zhaohui & Xiao, Ni & Zhao, Anni, 2022. "Robust traveling salesman problem with multiple drones: Parcel delivery under uncertain navigation environments," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    16. Yin, Yunqiang & Yang, Yongjian & Yu, Yugang & Wang, Dujuan & Cheng, T.C.E., 2023. "Robust vehicle routing with drones under uncertain demands and truck travel times in humanitarian logistics," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    17. Feng Li & Zhi-Ping Fan & Bing-Bing Cao & Hai-Mei Lv, 2020. "The Logistics Service Mode Selection for Last Mile Delivery Considering Delivery Service Cost and Capability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-17, September.
    18. Kloster, Konstantin & Moeini, Mahdi & Vigo, Daniele & Wendt, Oliver, 2023. "The multiple traveling salesman problem in presence of drone- and robot-supported packet stations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(2), pages 630-643.
    19. Liu, Zeyu & Li, Xueping & Khojandi, Anahita, 2022. "The flying sidekick traveling salesman problem with stochastic travel time: A reinforcement learning approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    20. Hendri Sutrisno & Chao-Lung Yang, 2023. "A two-echelon location routing problem with mobile satellites for last-mile delivery: mathematical formulation and clustering-based heuristic method," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 323(1), pages 203-228, April.
    21. Yu, Shaohua & Puchinger, Jakob & Sun, Shudong, 2022. "Van-based robot hybrid pickup and delivery routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 894-914.
    22. Themistoklis Stamadianos & Nikolaos A. Kyriakakis & Magdalene Marinaki & Yannis Marinakis, 2023. "Routing Problems with Electric and Autonomous Vehicles: Review and Potential for Future Research," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 1-34, June.
    23. Meng, Shanshan & Guo, Xiuping & Li, Dong & Liu, Guoquan, 2023. "The multi-visit drone routing problem for pickup and delivery services," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).

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