Vehicle Routing with Drones

We introduce a package service model where trucks as well as drones can deliver packages. Drones can travel on trucks or fly; but while flying, drones can only carry one package at a time and have to return to a truck to charge after each delivery. We present a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem of finding a good schedule for all drones and trucks. The algorithm is based on two nested local searches, thus the definition of suitable neighbourhoods of solutions is crucial for the algorithm. Empirical tests show that our algorithm performs significantly better than a natural Greedy algorithm. Moreover, the savings compared to solutions without drones turn out to be substantial, suggesting that delivery systems might considerably benefit from using drones in addition to trucks.