Joint routing and aborting optimization of cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper incorporates the abort policy into the routing problem of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). In order to serve a number of targets, some UAVs can be deployed each visiting part of the targets. Different from other works on routing of UAVs, it is assumed that each UAV may experience shocks during the travel. In order to reduce the expected cost of UAV destruction, it is allowed that a UAV aborts the mission if it is found to have undergone too many shocks after it finishes serving a certain number of targets. The optimal routing plan together with the abort policy for each UAV are studied, with the objective to minimize the total cost consisting of the expected cost of UAV destruction and the expected cost for unvisited targets. Test case is used to illustrate the application of the framework.