A matheuristic for the vehicle routing problem with drones and its variants

Schermer, D., Moeini, M., & Wendt, O. · 2019

citation-level

This paper solves a vehicle routing problem with drones, several trucks carrying several aircraft, minimizing makespan, by combining mathematical programming and heuristics. It is the reference when variants are solved in one framework. The card is citation-level and does not rerun the tables.

The VRPD is written as a mixed-integer program, with valid inequalities added to help a solver. Because solvers struggle on large instances, a matheuristic that uses the problem structure is proposed. Variants are examined in the same framework.

The objective is mainly makespan. That is not the cost objective in Sacramento and colleagues. A good solution depends on the instance and on how the variant is defined. It is not an implementation plan for a city.