Truck-drone collaborative routing optimization: a unified framework and systematic review

The collaborative operation of trucks and drones has increasingly emerged as an area of focus in both academic research and industrial applications, driven by the potential to revolutionize logistics and other sectors. This review presents a comprehensive and structured framework designed to systematically categorize and synthesize the existing body of research based on a review of 185 papers published between 2015 and 2025. It encompasses application domains, operational models, fundamental models, solution algorithms, current challenges, and future research directions relevant to truck-drone collaborative operations. The applications of truck-drone collaboration across various sectors are first explored, including logistics, emergency response, and monitoring systems. Three primary operational models of truck-drone collaboration are then analyzed, namely, single-truck and single-drone mode (STSD), single-truck and multiple-drone mode (STMD), and multiple-truck and multiple-drone mode (MTMD). Subsequently, this review classifies the existing mathematical models. It discusses collaboration mechanisms, optimization objectives, constraints, and uncertainty modeling, accompanied by a thorough examination of exact algorithms, approximation algorithms, heuristic algorithms, metaheuristic algorithms, artificial intelligence algorithms, and hybrid algorithms. Finally, the challenges and potential issues encountered in the truck-drone collaboration are summarized, and future research directions are proposed. This review proposes a unified framework for systematically classifying and integrating existing research on truck-drone collaborative routing optimization.