Focusing on using drones to deliver packages, this article considers a new delivery mode exploiting public transportation vehicles. Due to the battery capacity constraint, which limits the delivery area of drones, the public transportation vehicles are used to transport a drone to someplace unreachable by flying only. The problem under investigation is the round trip routing problem that finds the shortest path in terms of time in a time-dependent network, subject to the delivery deadline constraint and the energy budget constraint. The time-dependent network composes of the transit network and some extra drone flights. An exact solution algorithm is developed to find the optimal round trip path, and then, it is extended to accommodate the randomness of the considered network. The effectiveness is demonstrated via computer simulations.

中文翻译：

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基于公共交通网络的节能无人机交付往返路由

本文着眼于使用无人机递送包裹，考虑一种利用公共交通工具的新递送模式。由于电池容量的限制，限制了无人机的交付区域，公共交通工具用于将无人机运送到仅靠飞行无法到达的地方。正在研究的问题是在时间相关网络中找到最短路径的往返路由问题，受交付期限约束和能量预算约束。时间依赖网络由中转网络和一些额外的无人机飞行组成。开发了一种精确求解算法来寻找最佳往返路径，然后对其进行扩展以适应所考虑网络的随机性。通过计算机模拟证明了有效性。