Algorithms for Routing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the presence of Refueling Depots

TL;DR

This paper addresses a UAV routing problem with multiple refueling depots, proposing algorithms that efficiently generate near-optimal paths while respecting fuel constraints, with practical heuristics demonstrated on realistic scenarios.

Contribution

The paper introduces an approximation algorithm and heuristics for UAV routing with refueling depots, achieving solutions within 1.4% of optimal efficiently.

Findings

Solutions are on average within 1.4% of the optimal cost.

The proposed heuristics are computationally fast for moderate problem sizes.

The approach effectively manages fuel constraints in UAV routing.

Abstract

We consider a single Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) routing problem where there are multiple depots and the vehicle is allowed to refuel at any depot. The objective of the problem is to find a path for the UAV such that each target is visited at least once by the vehicle, the fuel constraint is never violated along the path for the UAV, and the total fuel required by the UAV is a minimum. We develop an approximation algorithm for the problem, and propose fast construction and improvement heuristics to solve the same. Computational results show that solutions whose costs are on an average within 1.4% of the optimum can be obtained relatively fast for the problem involving 5 depots and 25 targets.