Scheduling trucks and drones for cooperative deliveries

Truck and drone based cooperative delivery system is an emerging instant delivery mode for transporting packages in a more timely and efficient way than traditional delivery mode. This paper studies the scheduling of a fleet of truck groups, each of which can carry multiple drones. We formulate a mixed integer programming model for truck groups routes, and for the timing of the drones’ launching and return to their dedicated truck. The model objective is to minimize the total operational cost, including truck travel cost, drone travel cost, using truck groups fixed cost, and potential penalty for late delivery at customer locations. Column generation-based heuristic algorithm and some acceleration techniques are designed for solving the model efficiently. We carry out numerical experiments for validating the effectiveness of the mathematical model, algorithm, and acceleration techniques. In addition, sensitivity analyses are performed to derive some managerial implications.