Delivery Route Scheduling of Heterogeneous Robotic System with Customers Satisfaction by Using Multi-Objective Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Abstract

This study addresses the route scheduling problem for the heterogeneous robotic delivery system (HRDS) that perform delivery tasks in an urban environment. The HRDS comprises two distinct types of vehicles: an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), which is constrained by road networks, and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is capable of traversing terrain but has limitations in terms of energy and payload. The problem is formulated as an optimal route scheduling problem in a road network, where the goal is to find the route with minimum delivery cost and maximum customer satisfaction (CS) enabling the UAV to deliver packages to customers. We propose a new method of route scheduling based on an improved artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) that provides the optimal delivery route. The effectiveness and superiority of the method we proposed are demonstrated by comparison in simulations. Moreover, the physical experiments further validate the practicality of the model and method.

Keywords

• heterogeneous robotic delivery system
• customer satisfaction
• route scheduling
• multi-objective optimization
• artificial bee colony algorithm