Optimal Indoor Goods Delivery Using Drones

Abstract

During the last few years, the field of micro aerial vehicles (drones) has encountered a significant focus among the robotics research community. Autonomous maneuvering for indoor environments is highly challenging on one hand due to space topology that can include different storage facilities, and on the other hand due to need for optimal planning that saves drone battery and task accomplishment time. In this paper we study a type of vehicle routing problem applied to an indoor warehouse. In particular, some goods should be transported from storage areas to delivery areas by limited energy drones with finite capacities for transporting goods. The presentation includes a planning solution based on mathematical programming and presents supporting simulations and real-time experiments.