skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Cooperative Routing for an Air–Ground Vehicle Team—Exact Algorithm, Transformation Method, and Heuristics

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]
  1. Infoscitex Corp., Dayton, OH (United States)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States). Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS)
  3. Air Force Research Lab. (AFRL), Wright-Patterson AFB, OH (United States). Control Science Center of Excellence

This paper considers a cooperative vehicle routing problem for an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission in the presence of communication constraints between the vehicles. The proposed framework uses a ground vehicle and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that travel cooperatively and visit a set of targets while satisfying the communication constraints. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program, and a branch-and-cut algorithm is developed to solve the problem to optimality. Furthermore, a transformation method and a heuristic are also developed for the problem. The effectiveness of all the algorithms is corroborated through extensive computational experiments on several randomly generated instances. Furthermore, this paper is motivated by an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission involving a single unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a ground vehicle, where the vehicles must coordinate their activity in the presence of communication constraints. The combination of a small UAV and a ground vehicle is an ideal platform for such missions, since small UAVs can fly at low altitudes and can avoid obstacles or threats that would be problematic for the ground vehicle alone. This paper addresses the coordinated routing problem involving these two vehicles and presents an algorithm to obtain an optimal solution for this problem, fast heuristics to obtain good feasible solutions, and also a transformation method to transform any instance of this cooperative vehicle routing problem to an instance of the one-in-a-set traveling salesman problem.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1835758
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-18-22907
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Vol. 17, Issue 1; ISSN 1545-5955
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (27)

Hierarchical self-healing rings journal January 1995
Heuristic algorithms for the multi-depot ring-star problem journal May 2010
SONET/SDH ring assignment with capacity constraints journal June 2003
Odd Minimum Cut-Sets and b -Matchings journal February 1982
Solution of large-scale symmetric travelling salesman problems journal July 1991
Topological design of ring networks journal April 1994
An effective implementation of the Lin–Kernighan traveling salesman heuristic journal October 2000
On cooperation between a fuel constrained UAV and a refueling UGV for large scale mapping applications conference June 2015
Cooperative Surveillance and Pursuit Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unattended Ground Sensors journal January 2015
Path Planning for Cooperative Routing of Air-Ground Vehicles preprint January 2016
The Two-Echelon Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem: Models and Math-Based Heuristics journal August 2011
GLNS: An effective large neighborhood search heuristic for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem journal November 2017
A Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for the Symmetric Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem journal June 1997
An Efficient Transformation Of The Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem journal February 1993
The Ring Star Problem: Polyhedral analysis and exact algorithm journal March 2004
Multiple depot ring star problem: a polyhedral study and an exact algorithm journal April 2016
The Capacitated m-Ring-Star Problem journal December 2007
Hub location in backbone/tributary network design: a review journal May 1998
Algorithms for Heterogeneous, Multiple Depot, Multiple Unmanned Vehicle Path Planning Problems journal December 2016
Cooperative air and ground surveillance journal September 2006
Applications of Aerosondes in the Arctic journal December 2004
Planning Paths for Package Delivery in Heterogeneous Multirobot Teams journal October 2015
Networking Issues for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems journal July 2008
Path planning for cooperative routing of air-ground vehicles conference July 2016
Hierarchical Ring Network Design Using Branch-and-Price journal May 2005
Generalized multiple depot traveling salesmen problem—Polyhedral study and exact algorithm journal June 2016
An exact algorithm for a heterogeneous, multiple depot, multiple traveling salesman problem conference June 2015