Facility Location Problem Approach for Distributed Drones

Abstract

Currently, industry and academia are undergoing an evolution in developing the next generation of drone applications. Including the development of autonomous drones that can carry out tasks without the assistance of a human operator. In spite of this, there are still problems left unanswered related to the placement of drone take-off, landing and charging areas. Future policies by governments and aviation agencies are inevitably going to restrict the operational area where drones can take-off and land. Hence, there is a need to develop a system to manage landing and take-off areas for drones. Additionally, we proposed this approach due to the lack of justification for the initial location of drones in current research. Therefore, to provide a foundation for future research, we give a justified reason that allows predetermined location of drones with the use of drone ports. Furthermore, we propose an algorithm to optimally place these drone ports to minimize the average distance drones must travel based on a set of potential drone port locations and tasks generated in a given area. Our approach is derived from the Facility Location problem which produces an efficient near optimal solution to place drone ports that reduces the overall drone energy consumption. Secondly, we apply various traveling salesman algorithms to determine the shortest route the drone must travel to visit all the tasks.

Robust Maximum Coverage Facility Location Problem with Drones Considering Uncertainties in Battery Availability and Consumption

“…Incorporation of sustainability, emissions, and technology (battery replacement) costs could make the model more suitable for urban logistics applications. The methodology proposed here to incorporate uncertainty in battery availability and consumption could also be used in drone-based applications in facility location modeling ( 39 , 40 ) and routing-based applications ( 15 , 23 , 41 ). A key potential application of drone-based delivery systems is on-demand or real-time dynamic delivery systems.…”

Performance measurement of a solution for the travelling salesman problem for routing through the incorporation of service time variability

“…Through the incorporation of service time variability, Lynskey (2019) proposed an algorithm for the best way of finding drone ports, seeking to minimize the average journey distance from the ports to the tasks generated in a given area. In their proposal, they apply various travelling salesman algorithms to determine the shortest route to be travelled by the drone to visit all the tasks.…”

A Hybrid Mechanism for Helicopters

“…This drone application proposal [4] is shown as Figure 2. The basic principle is that the different motors work better at different speeds; the electric motor is more efficient at producing torque, or turning power, and the combustion engine is better for maintaining a high speed (better than a typical electric motor) [11].…”

“…This drone application proposal [4] is shown as Figure 2. Figure 2 explains the sequence for the operation procedure of the proposed hybrid mechanism.…”

“…To fill this gap, the major focus of this study is to propose a hybrid mechanism (turbine engine + electricity power system) to provide instant power right after the engine's flameout so as to maintain the helicopter's rotor head speed for safe landing. Currently, industry and academia are undergoing an evolution in developing the next generation of drone applications [4]. Due to financial budget constraint, the present experiment attempted to design and build a remote control helicopter for testing this concept.…”