Clustered Orienteering Problem with Subgroups

This article presents COPS, an innovative route planning model that generalizes the classical COP and SOP problems. COPS introduces hierarchical subgroups within clusters, enabling the representation of visit alternatives with different levels of effort and reward within the same region, thereby accurately reflecting the challenges of real-world robotic missions. To address the problem's complexity, an exact Integer Linear Programming (ILP) method was developed for smaller instances, along with a Tabu Search based metaheuristic (COPS-TABU) for large-scale cases. Experimental results demonstrate the competitiveness of the proposed algorithm compared to the state of the art, leading to a publication in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.