Abstract
Traditional terminal logistics distribution in urban areas is mainly concentrated on the ground, which leads to increasingly serious air pollution and traffic congestion. With the popularization of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) techniques and the reform of low altitude airspace, terminal logistics distribution is expected to be carried out by drones. Therefore, it is of great significance to construct a reasonable air route network for logistics UAV to ensure the safety and efficiency of operations. In this paper, a single route planning model and an air route network planning model for UAV were constructed by fully considering the complex urban low altitude environment, the flight performance of UAV and the characteristics of logistics tasks to regulate the flights of drones. Then, taking Jiangjun Road Campus of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as an example, the improved cellular automata (CA) was adopted to search for the optimal route between different waypoints, and the optimal spanning tree algorithm was used to construct the route network. The experimental results demonstrated that the improved CA could greatly reduce search time and obtain the optimal route while enhancing safety. With the satisfaction of the voyage, the needs of logistics and distribution constraints, a network that had smaller intersection points and redundancy was generated. The models and core ideas proposed in this paper can not only regulate operation of drones but also provide a solid foundation for the distribution of logistics UAV in the future.
Highlights
In the information age, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) logistics, as a rapidly developing new strategic industry, has shown great virtues in both military and civilian fields
UAV logistics belongs to the domain of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) [1]
After all the optimal routes of any two points in the region have been obtained through the algorithm in Section 2.3, the appropriate nodes and the corresponding optimal route between nodes would be selected to construct the air route network according to the characteristics and constraints of the logistics task to model the logistics UAV network in the region
Summary
UAV logistics, as a rapidly developing new strategic industry, has shown great virtues in both military and civilian fields. The air route network of UAV terminal distribution has not been formed, so it belongs to the latter It can generally be transformed into a path search problem in state space, and a search algorithm is adopted to solve the route [13]. Based on the improved ant colony algorithm, the route of single drone was constructed in [18,19]. In [20], the same algorithm was adopted to plan routes for cluster drones Another method called CA aims to settle the network node optimization problem of avoiding the three areas. This paper proposes an air route network planning method based on improved CA and optimal spanning tree after considering the characteristics of urban low altitude environment and the operational limitations of logistics UAV. Multiple indicators are selected to conduct comprehensive evaluation and analysis to ensure the rationality and scientificity of the network
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