An extended model of coordination of an all-terrain vehicle and a multivisit drone

Abstract

In this paper, a model that combines the movement of a multivisit drone with a limited endurance and a base vehicle that can move freely in the continuous space is considered. The mothership is used to charge the battery of the drone, whereas the drone performs the task of visiting multiple targets of distinct shapes: points and polygonal chains. For polygonal chains, it is required to traverse a given fraction of its lengths that represent surveillance/inspection activities. The goal of the problem is to minimize the overall weighted distance traveled by both vehicles. A mixed integer second-order cone program is developed and strengthened using valid inequalities and giving good bounds for the Big-M constants that appear in the model. A refined matheuristic that provides reasonable solutions in short computing time is also established. The quality of the solutions provided by both approaches is compared and analyzed on an extensive battery of instances with different number and shapes of targets, which shows the usefulness of our approach and its applicability in different situations.