Hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Mixed Integer Linear Programming for Flying Sidekick TSP

The increasing use of drones to perform various tasks has motivated an exponential growth of research aimed at optimizing the use of these means, benefiting both military and civilian applications, including logistics delivery. In this sense, the combined use of trucks and drones has been explored with great interest by Operations Research. This work presents mathematical formulations in Mixed Integer Linear Programming and proposes a hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGenFS) for optimizing a variation of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) called Flying Sidekick TSP (FSTSP), in which truck and drone cooperate. The results obtained confirmed that the adopted formulation for the exact solution is suitable for solving problems up to ten customers, and the HGenFS proved to be capable of finding optimal solutions for the FSTSP in a few seconds by incorporating specific heuristics and a local search phase.