A Simulated Annealing Heuristic Approach for the Energy Minimizing Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones

The Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones (EVRPD) is a recently proposed VRP that combines two state-of-the-art means of transportation, electric ground vehicles (EVs) and drones, intending to minimize total energy consumption. The payload weight is considered the element that has the greatest impact on the energy consumption rate. The EVRPD assumes packages of different weight classes. The EVs serve as mobile depots, from which drones are deployed to deliver the packages. Both vehicle types have quantity, weight, and energy limitations. The Simulated Annealing heuristic of this research follows a population-based approach, which utilizes neighborhood operators to evolve the solutions. Three different temperature decaying strategies are tested on the EVRPD benchmark instances found in the literature, and their computational results are compared and discussed.