Drive, Pack, Fly: The Travelling Thief Problem with Drone

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.16435v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In collection operations, accumulating payload progressively slows the vehicle, imposing a cumulative penalty on routing efficiency. An onboard drone can offset this penalty by retrieving outlying items, thereby shortening the makespan and increasing operational profit. However, travel time remains load-dependent, and each item collected by the ground vehicle shifts the arrival times that govern the drone's launch and rendezvous points. This paper