Deployment of Battery Swapping Stations for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Subject to Cyclic Production Flow Constraints

Abstract

Given is a production system in which material handling operations are carried out by a fleet of UAVs. A problem has been formulated for this case of cyclic multi-product batch production flow, which combines the problems of split delivery-vehicle routing with time windows and deployment of battery swapping depots. It is assumed that the times of execution of pickup and delivery operations are known. During these operations, workpieces following different production routes reach and leave workstations cyclically. Given is the number of battery swapping depots and their potential arrangement. Given is also the rate of power consumption by an UAV in hovering mode or flying at a constant speed as well as during take-off and landing. The goal is to find the number of UAVs and the routes they fly to serve all the workstations periodically, within a given takt time, without violating constraints imposed by the due-time pickup/delivery operations and collision-free movement of UAVs. A declarative model of the analysed case allows to view the problem under consideration as a constraint satisfaction problem and solve it in the Oz Mozart programming environment.