The Mathematical Modeling of the Two-Echelon Ground Vehicle and Its Mounted Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Cooperated Routing Problem

Abstract

In this paper, we presents a novel Two-Echelon Ground Vehicle and Its Mounted Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Cooperated Routing Problem (2E-GUCRP), which consists of optimizing the route of both ground vehicle (GV) and its mounted Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) in the context of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance(ISR) mission. The UAV is launched from the ground vehicle and automatically flies to the designated target to accomplish the ISR mission. Meanwhile, the ground vehicle is synchronized to charge or change the UAV's battery on the designated landing points based on the UAV's battery life. The objective is to design efficient ground vehicle and UAV routes to minimize the total mission time while meeting the operational constraints. The experimental results show that the model proposed in this paper is correct, but the existing commercial software cannot solve the large-scale problem with an acceptable time.