Stochastic Task Scheduling in UAV-Based Intelligent On-Demand Meal Delivery System

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic task scheduling problem with stochastic task arrival times and due dates in the UAV-based intelligent on-demand meal delivery system (UIOMDS) to improve the efficiency. The objective is to minimize the total tardiness. The new constraints and characteristics introduced by UAVs in the problem model are fully studied. An iterated heuristic framework SES (Stochastic Event Scheduling) is proposed to periodically schedule tasks, which consists of a task collection and a dynamic task scheduling phases. Two task collection strategies are introduced and three Roulette-based flight dispatching approaches are employed. A simulated annealing based local search method is integrated to optimize the solutions. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is robust and more effective compared with other two existing algorithms.