Paper detail

Drone Deployment Optimization for Direct Delivery with Time Windows and Battery Replacements

Aerial drones offer a distinct potential to reduce the delivery time and energy consumption for the delivery of time-sensitive and small products. However, there is still a need in the relevant industry to understand the performance of drone-based delivery under different business needs and drone operating conditions. We studied a drone deployment optimization problem for direct delivery of goods to customers maintaining a specified time window. This paper presents a new mathematical optimization-based decision-making methodology to help business owners optimally route their drone fleet minimizing the total energy consumption, required fleet size, and the required number of additional batteries. A realistic feature of the optimization method is that instead of replacing the drone battery after each return to the depot, it keeps track of the remaining energy in the drone battery and decides on battery replacements accounting for the drone routing and the user-specified minimum required battery energy. Numerical results based on real drone flight tests and delivery data provide insights into the effect of different drone operating parameters on the energy consumption, required fleet size, and the required number of battery replacements. Results from a case study show that the total energy consumption, required fleet size, and the required number of battery replacements increase by 72.22%, 22.2%, and 200%, respectively, as the drones fly over the road networks compared to flying in a straight path. Additionally, results show that using a mixed fleet of hexacopter and quadcopter drones reduces the total energy consumption by 48.52% compared to using a homogeneous fleet of only hexacopters.