An Improved Firefly Algorithm used to Location Selection of Distribution Center for Logistics UA V

With the advancement of China's low-altitude airspace reform and the rapid development of the UAV industry, UAV logistics, as an emerging logistics industry, has a great development trend. The Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) has carried out the UA Vs distribution projects in the northwest and east area of China. The location of distribution center for logistics UAV plays an important role to establish the logistics distribution network and achieve the company's profits. In this paper, an improved firefly algorithm for deciding the location of logistics UAV distribution center is proposed. Firstly, according to the performance characteristics and constraints of logistics UAV, an integer model aims to maximize the profit is established. Then, an improved firefly algorithm is proposed to solve the above model by discretizing the standard firefly algorithm in which the moving step factor is ignored and the probability selection formula is introduced. Based on the improved fluorescein location updating formula, this algorithm is used to solve the location of logistics UAV distribution center. Compared with the traditional firefly algorithm, the proposed method avoids premature convergence to the local optimal value by introducing a perturbation mechanism, thus improving the solution accuracy of the algorithm. Based on the real data of the UAV distribution center from JD.com in Northwest China, the case study show that comparing with the traditional genetic algorithms such as genetic algorithm, the improved firefly algorithm (IFA) can more quickly obtain the optimal solution or approximate optimal solution of the problem to optimize the location model of logistics UAV distribution center and realize profit maximization.