TY - GEN
T1 - Optimal control of a hybrid UAV/train parcel delivery system
AU - Huang, Hailong
AU - Savkin, Andrey V.
AU - Huang, Chao
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council and ERATO HASUO Metamathematics for Systems Design Project (No. JMP-JER1603) JST.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council and ERATO HASUO Metamathematics for Systems Design Project (No. JMPJER1603) JST.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Technical Committee on Control Theory, Chinese Association of Automation.
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - This paper presents a novel parcel delivery system consisting of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a public train. The train moves along a fixed route following a predefined timetable and carries a set of parcels. The UAV departs from the train, delivers a parcel to a customer, returns to the train, and picks another parcel. The UAV can also travel with the train and replace the battery on the roof of it. Since the train is not controlled by the parcel delivery system, its timetable should be taken into account to efficiently deliver parcels. An optimal control problem is formulated with the objective of minimizing the total delivery time and a suboptimal algorithm is developed, which is computationally efficient. A case study is conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm and compare it with existing schemes. The proposed approach is more cost efficient than the Truck only scheme and the Truck plus UAV scheme, since there is no cost associated with the truck. Moreover, it improves delivery time and covers a larger area compare to the UAV only delivery scheme.
AB - This paper presents a novel parcel delivery system consisting of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a public train. The train moves along a fixed route following a predefined timetable and carries a set of parcels. The UAV departs from the train, delivers a parcel to a customer, returns to the train, and picks another parcel. The UAV can also travel with the train and replace the battery on the roof of it. Since the train is not controlled by the parcel delivery system, its timetable should be taken into account to efficiently deliver parcels. An optimal control problem is formulated with the objective of minimizing the total delivery time and a suboptimal algorithm is developed, which is computationally efficient. A case study is conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm and compare it with existing schemes. The proposed approach is more cost efficient than the Truck only scheme and the Truck plus UAV scheme, since there is no cost associated with the truck. Moreover, it improves delivery time and covers a larger area compare to the UAV only delivery scheme.
KW - Control of delivery systems
KW - Parcel delivery
KW - Unmanned aerial vehicles
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074389583&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.23919/ChiCC.2019.8866511
DO - 10.23919/ChiCC.2019.8866511
M3 - Conference article published in proceeding or book
AN - SCOPUS:85074389583
T3 - Chinese Control Conference, CCC
SP - 6606
EP - 6609
BT - Proceedings of the 38th Chinese Control Conference, CCC 2019
A2 - Fu, Minyue
A2 - Sun, Jian
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 38th Chinese Control Conference, CCC 2019
Y2 - 27 July 2019 through 30 July 2019
ER -