Persistent Visitation with Fuel Constraints

Abstract

This work is motivated by the periodic vehicle routing problem (PVRP) where a vehicle is to perpetually visit customers within a given area. In this work there is no sense of horizon or days as in classic PVRP. Instead, it is assumed that each customer has a rate at which it must be visited for the vehicle to satisfy its mission. The vehicle's fuel limitations are taken into account and fuel depots with a fixed fuel price are included. The problem of finding paths that satisfy the locations’ revisit rates and minimize the total cost of fuel is treated. An algorithm that provides solutions to this problem under given constraints is presented.