Insights into the application of the traveling salesman problem to logistics without considering financial risk: A bibliometric study

Suppliers can use different strategies to distribute their products, Among the most common complex optimization problems related to the transportation of products is the traveling salesman problem. In the traveling-salesman problem, a route is chosen that visits each node exactly once, taking into account the shortest travel time, and finally returns to the original node. In this problem, all nodes must be visited. If we consider the application of this problem in logistics, we can study the necessity of this problem in transportation means such as trucks or drones. The upcoming paper is thoroughly studied and researched considering the related articles published in the last three decades, and bibliometric analysis is used for the details of this problem. This paper aims to statistically evaluate the influence and importance of the traveling salesman on logistics without considering financial risk by presenting an analysis of the works published between 1983 and 2023. As part of our comprehensive literature review table with analysis of export, we will conduct a comprehensive review of the most relevant articles in the field from 2020 to 2023 to better understand the trend in the subject in the last few years. Data were obtained from the Web of Science and focused on metrics such as the total number of publications, citations, average citations per publication, and trending countries. Graphical and statistical analysis was performed using Excel and R-Studio. China, the USA, and Germany are the countries with the most publications. Laporte is the most prolific author with 8 publications. Much research has been done on this topic, especially in the Journal of transportation research part E-logistic with 43 articles, and the main application areas are logistics, vehicles, and drones. These data may prove useful to researchers seeking an overview of the traveling salesman problem to determine future research directions

A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Drone

This paper addresses the Traveling Salesman Problem with Drone (TSP-D), in which a truck and drone are used to deliver parcels to customers. The objective of this problem is to either minimize the total operational cost (min-cost TSP-D) or minimize the completion time for the truck and drone (min-time TSP-D). This problem has gained a lot of attention in the last few years since it is matched with the recent trends in a new delivery method among logistics companies. To solve the TSP-D, we propose a hybrid genetic search with dynamic population management and adaptive diversity control based on a split algorithm, problem-tailored crossover and local search operators, a new restore method to advance the convergence and an adaptive penalization mechanism to dynamically balance the search between feasible/infeasible solutions. The computational results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing methods in terms of solution quality and improves best known solutions found in the literature. Moreover, various analyses on the impacts of crossover choice and heuristic components have been conducted to analysis further their sensitivity to the performance of our method.Comment: Technical Report. 34 pages, 5 figure

Design and Assessment of an Urban Circular Combined Truck–Drone Delivery System Using Continuum Approximation Models and Integer Programming

Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).The analysis of tandem truck–drone delivery systems has recently attracted the attention of the research community, mainly focused on extending classical operational research problems such as the multiple traveling salesperson or the vehicle-routing problem. In this paper, we explore the design of an urban massive combined delivery system using a continuum approximation (CA) method for a circular city characterized by a certain density of customers. Starting from a set of parameters defining the main characteristics of trucks and drones, a sectorization of the delivery area is first determined. Then, for a given truck capacity, the optimal number of trucks is obtained considering different scenarios using three integer programming models. We propose several performance indicators to compare the tandem approach with the alternative solely truck delivery system

A variable neighborhood search for flying sidekick traveling salesman problem

The efficiency and dynamism of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have presented substantial application opportunities in several industries in the last years. Notably, logistic companies have given close attention to these vehicles to reduce delivery time and operational cost. A variant of the traveling salesman problem (TSP), called the flying sidekick traveling salesman problem, was introduced involving drone-assisted parcel delivery. The drone launches from the truck, proceeds to deliver parcels to a customer, and then is recovered by the truck at a third location. While the drone travels through a trip, the truck delivers parcels to other customers as long as the drone has enough battery to hover waiting for the truck. This work proposes a hybrid heuristic where the initial solution is created from the optimal TSP solution reached by a TSP solver. Next, an implementation of the general variable neighborhood search is employed to obtain the delivery routes of truck and drone. Computational experiments show the potential of the algorithm to improve significantly delivery time. Furthermore, we provide a new set of instances based on the well-known traveling salesman problem library instances

A variable neighborhood search for flying sidekick traveling salesman problem.

The efficiency and dynamism of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have presented substantial application opportunities in several industries in the last years. Notably, logistic companies have given close attention to these vehicles to reduce delivery time and operational cost. A variant of the traveling salesman problem (TSP), called the flying sidekick traveling salesman problem, was introduced involving drone-assisted parcel delivery. The drone launches from the truck, proceeds to deliver parcels to a customer, and then is recovered by the truck at a third location. While the drone travels through a trip, the truck delivers parcels to other customers as long as the drone has enough battery to hover waiting for the truck. This work proposes a hybrid heuristic where the initial solution is created from the optimal TSP solution reached by a TSP solver. Next, an implementation of the general variable neighborhood search is employed to obtain the delivery routes of truck and drone. Computational experiments show the potential of the algorithm to improve significantly delivery time. Furthermore, we provide a new set of instances based on the well-known traveling salesman problem library instances

Hybrid Vehicle-drone Routing Problem For Pick-up And Delivery Services Mathematical Formulation And Solution Methodology

The fast growth of online retail and associated increasing demand for same-day delivery have pushed online retail and delivery companies to develop new paradigms to provide faster, cheaper, and greener delivery services. Considering drones’ recent technological advancements over the past decade, they are increasingly ready to replace conventional truck-based delivery services, especially for the last mile of the trip. Drones have significantly improved in terms of their travel ranges, load-carrying capacity, positioning accuracy, durability, and battery charging rates. Substituting delivery vehicles with drones could result in $50M of annual cost savings for major U.S. service providers. The first objective of this research is to develop a mathematical formulation and efficient solution methodology for the hybrid vehicle-drone routing problem (HVDRP) for pick-up and delivery services. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer program, which minimizes the vehicle and drone routing cost to serve all customers. The formulation captures the vehicle-drone routing interactions during the drone dispatching and collection processes and accounts for drone operation constraints related to flight range and load carrying capacity limitations. A novel solution methodology is developed which extends the classic Clarke and Wright algorithm to solve the HVDRP. The performance of the developed heuristic is benchmarked against two other heuristics, namely, the vehicle-driven routing heuristic and the drone-driven routing heuristic. Anticipating the potential risk of using drones for delivery services, aviation authorities in the U.S. and abroad have mandated necessary regulatory rules to ensure safe operations. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is examining the feasibility of drone flights in restricted airspace for product delivery, requiring drones to fly at or below 400-feet and to stay within the pilot’s line of sight (LS). Therefore, a second objective of this research is considered to develop a modeling framework for the integrated vehicle-drone routing problem for pick-up and delivery services considering the regulatory rule requiring all drone flights to stay within the pilot’s line of sight (LS). A mixed integer program (MIP) and an efficient solution methodology were developed for the problem. The solution determines the optimal vehicle and drone routes to serve all customers without violating the LS rule such that the total routing cost of the integrated system is minimized. Two different heuristics are developed to solve the problem, which extends the Clarke and Wright Algorithm to cover the multimodality aspects of the problem and to satisfy the LS rule. The first heuristic implements a comprehensive multimodal cost saving search to construct the most efficient integrated vehicle-drone routes. The second heuristic is a light version of the first heuristic as it adopts a vehicle-driven cost saving search. Several experiments are conducted to examine the performance of the developed methodologies using hypothetical grid networks of different sizes. The capability of the developed model in answering a wide variety of questions related to the planning of the vehicle-drone delivery system is illustrated. In addition, a case study is presented in which the developed methodology is applied to provide pick-up and delivery services in the downtown area of the City of Dallas. The results show that mandating the LS rule could double the overall system operation cost especially in dense urban areas with LS obstructions