Improving the efficiency of last-mile delivery with the flexible drones traveling salesman problem

作者：

Highlights：

• Flexible Drones Traveling Salesman Problem was proposed to minimize delivery time.

• The two-stage heuristic, bisecting K-means and OR-Tools, solves the problem.

• The proposed model outperforms the traveling salesman truck-only mode.

• The proposed model is suitable for last-mile delivery in urban areas.

• Managerial implications are suggested based on the experimental results.

摘要

•Flexible Drones Traveling Salesman Problem was proposed to minimize delivery time.•The two-stage heuristic, bisecting K-means and OR-Tools, solves the problem.•The proposed model outperforms the traveling salesman truck-only mode.•The proposed model is suitable for last-mile delivery in urban areas.•Managerial implications are suggested based on the experimental results.

论文关键词：Bisecting K-means Algorithm,OR-Tools,Genetic Algorithm,Simulated Annealing,Last-mile delivery,Unmanned aerial vehicle

论文评审过程：Received 8 October 2021, Revised 22 July 2022, Accepted 31 July 2022, Available online 4 August 2022, Version of Record 10 August 2022.

论文官网地址：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.118351