Optimization approaches for civil applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or aerial drones: A survey

Otto, A., Agatz, N., Campbell, J., Golden, B., & Pesch, E. · 2018

excerpt

This is the large early survey of optimization for civil drones, covering more than parcel delivery, including monitoring, agriculture, and disaster response. The venue is Networks, not OR Spectrum. The bibliographic record was checked in Crossref; the card does not claim that every cited work was re-checked.

It organizes promising civil uses and the aircraft characteristics that matter for operations planning, then surveys types of optimization models. The authors describe the review as covering more than 200 works. It does not collapse every application into one model, and it closes with research directions.

The map is as of 2018. Finer classifications of drone routing after that date belong to later surveys such as Chung and Macrina. Do not treat this survey’s authority as confirming a numerical result from any single paper it cites.