Planning deliveries with UAV routing under weather forecast and energy consumption constraints

In this paper, a depth-first search strategy to cope with the problem of multi-trip unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fleet mission planning is proposed. The considered UAVs delivery problem aims at a trajectory planning issue addressed for UAVs operating in a hostile environment while considering battery and payload weight as well as vehicles reuse. Employed UAVs fly on a 3D plane matching a distribution network while servicing customers and ensuring collision avoidance among team members. The objective is to get a sequence of submissions that ensures delivery to customers satisfying the requested amount and demands within a given time horizon. The method proposed in this paper offers solutions to several questions related to the multistage mission planning that could be applied to solve problems such as minimizing energy consumption, conducting the mission in the shortest possible time, just-in-time replenishing of supplies, and so on. The computational experiment illustrates possibilities of the proposed method.