A Team Orienteering Problem with Zoning for Safe and Flexible Operations of UAVs in a Dynamic Environment

Casper Bak Pedersen, Inkyung Sung*, Peter Nielsen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

A Team Orienteering Problem (TOP) that seeks the most profitable routes for multiple players given limited travel time or length is one of the most relevant routing problems for service delivery by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with limited battery or energy capacity. In this study, we propose a variant of the TOP, where an operational area for multiple UAVs is divided into non-overlapping zones and routes for UAVs are derived within the zones. Importantly, by allocating designated zones to each UAV, any update on a UAV’s route within its zone does not interfere with other UAVs’ routes. This aspect is critical for a service or a mission to be executed under a highly dynamic environment especially with limited communication between UAVs. The operational and practical benefits of applying the proposed solution approach are demonstrated by comparing it to a classic TOP solution in a simulation environment where a profit of visiting a location is uncertain.

Original languageEnglish
Article number61
JournalJournal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications
Volume111
Issue number2
ISSN0921-0296
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.

Keywords

  • Area decomposition
  • Clustering
  • Team orienteering problem
  • UAV
  • Unmanned aerial vehicle
  • Zoning

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