Drone scheduling in a hexagon‐based delivery network with multiple fulfillment centers

Abstract As an emerging technology, drones have great potential in small parcel delivery, reducing operational costs, and improving efficiency. However, battery technologies restrict the endurance of drones. Inspired by the cellular networks used in mobile communications, a hexagon‐based delivery network (HBDN) is proposed to overcome such restrictions. Battery‐swapping stations are incorporated into the HBDN to expand the delivery service range of drones. Based on the proposed HBDN, the multidrone scheduling problem in multiple fulfillment centers (FCs) is addressed. The objective is to minimize the makespan. A mixed‐integer programming model is constructed for the problem. A memetic algorithm with hill climbing (MAHC) is developed to address the problem. A strategy is proposed to prevent inbreeding in the crossover procedure. A local search based on hill climbing is combined with the mutation operation. A lower bound of the problem is proposed to measure the performance of MAHC. Furthermore, load balancing and nearest‐priority strategies are proposed to select FCs. Comparative experiments show that MAHC performs competitively in terms of running time and solution quality.