Improved PSO-Based Two-Phase Logistics UAV Path Planning under Dynamic Demand and Wind Conditions

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increasingly become integral to logistics and distribution due to their flexibility and mobility. However, the existing studies often overlook the dynamic nature of customer demands and wind conditions, limiting the practical applicability of their proposed strategies. To tackle this challenge, we firstly construct a time-slicing-based UAV path planning model that incorporates dynamic customer demands and wind impacts. Based on this model, a two-stage logistics UAV path planning framework is developed according to the analysis of the customer pool updates and dynamic attitudes. Secondly, a dynamic demand and wind-aware logistics UAV path planning problem is formulated to minimize the weighted average of the energy consumption and the customer satisfaction penalty cost, which comprehensively takes the energy consumption constraints, load weight constraints, and hybrid time window constraints into consideration. To solve this problem, an improved particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based multiple logistics UAV path planning algorithm is developed, which has good performance with fast convergence and better solutions. Finally, extensive simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm can not only adhere to the UAV’s maximum load and battery power constraints but also significantly enhance the loading efficiency and battery utilization rate. Particularly, compared to the genetic algorithm (GA), simulated annealing (SA), and traditional PSO strategies, our proposed algorithm achieves satisfactory solutions within a reasonable time frame and reduces the distribution costs by up to 9.82%.