A novel solution for routing a swarm of drones operated on a mobile host

Abstract

The increasing use of drones across various sectors demands optimized deployment strategies under diverse constraints. This paper tackles the Multiple Capacitated Mobile Depot Vehicles Routing Problem (mCMoD-VRP), a challenging variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) where multiple drones with limited flight range operate from a mobile depot. The goal is to maximize target coverage while considering flight endurance, depot mobility, and drone multiplicity. We introduce a novel evolutionary algorithm, Evolutionary Optimization for Synchronized Routing Problem (EOSRP), which constructs synchronized routes for the drone swarm, accounting for all constraints. EOSRP distinguishes itself with specialized genetic operators, specifically designed to efficiently handle the constraints of mCMoD-VRP, enhancing both exploration and exploitation of the search space. EOSRP also facilitates collaborative planning among drones, enabling them to share targets and optimize routes collectively, resulting in more efficient use of flight range capacity. Comprehensive simulations on benchmark problems demonstrate that EOSRP consistently outperforms a serialized version of our previous single-drone algorithm, Genetic Algorithm for Capacitated Mobile Depot (GA-CMoD), achieving an average of 8.7% higher target coverage and 7.28% more efficient use of flight range capacity. EOSRP's ability to generate synchronized solutions through collaborative planning leads to significantly improved mission efficiency.