SPLIT DELIVERIES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM WITH DRONES

Technological advances, intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, have highlighted the importance of e-commerce and last-mile logistics, boosting the use of drones to reduce costs and increase operational efficiency. Despite the limitations of load and autonomy, the integration between drones and vehicles in the routing of deliveries shows promise. This study proposes a new mathematical model of mixed integer linear programming for the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones and Fractional Deliveries (SDVRPD), which allows the allocation of multiple vehicles to serve the same customer. The computational experiments, carried out with the CPLEX solver, demonstrated that the hybrid model has superior economic performance to the model based exclusively on vehicles, evidencing the potential of drones to make logistics operations more efficient and competitive.