Traveling Salesman Problem for a Class of Carrier-Vehicle Systems

This work addresses a Traveling Salesman Problem for a class of systems composed of two cooperating vehicles with different capabilities. The first one, the carrier, is typically slow but has a virtually infinite operating range. Its primary role is to deploy and recover a second vehicle, typically an aircraft, which is faster but has a reduced operating range. The synergistic use of the above carrier-vehicle system is exploited in addressing a scenario in which the goal is to make the faster vehicle visit in the shortest time a given collection of targets. After a careful analysis of the problem, a sub-optimal heuristic is presented and its properties are discussed.