Communications of the ACM
Drone Delivery
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Donghyun Kim says his work will allow multiple drones to communicate to coordinated deliveries.
Credit: Lauren Lopez de Azua / Kennesaw State University
When delivery companies like FedEx, Amazon, and UPS launch drones to deliver packages in the near future, one Kennesaw State computer science professor may be at the crux of solving one of their most complicated problems.
Donghyun (David) Kim, assistant professor of computer science and an expert in computer algorithm optimization, is designing a fast-running algorithm to tackle simultaneous coordination problems among multiple delivery trucks and the drones launched from them.
Kim's study involves multiple robotic drone trajectory planning to figure out how best to distribute a given set of packages, by drone and truck, as they move concurrently. These trajectories have to be optimized simultaneously to avoid overlapping the delivery paths of multiple trucks and drones, Kim says. The problem becomes extremely complicated when trying to consider which truck should deliver which package by drone, and how that drone will return to a moving vehicle, he says.
"A simplified form of this problem can be easily proven to be NP-hard. This means that when the input size of the problem is too big, it is unlikely to find an optimal solution within a practical time even using a state-of-the-art computer," Kim says.
The development of his approximation algorithm, which is a simplified technical term to describe a sub-optimal fast-running algorithm with a mathematically proven worst-case performance guarantee, will help courier companies coordinate their efforts and save both time and money when operating multiple drone-assisted truck delivery systems, Kim says.
"This research aims to develop a travel plan for multiple drones to perform a given surveillance task with minimum delay," Kim says. "Drone technology is shaped by computer science in every aspect."
Kim is using mathematical models within computer science and mathematics to find a solution, an offshoot of the traveling salesman problem, or TSP, a well-known computational issue related to vehicle routing issues. Kim presented his first result of this kind of complex problem with drones at IEEE INFOCOM, the premier computer communications conference, in 2012.
"Around that time, I observed many researchers who did not notice the complexity of this problem and used a very rough planning strategy to operate multiple robotic vehicles, such as drones," says Kim, who has been conducting research on aerial robotic technology since 2012.
Kim says he believes his latest research is a major revelation in the area of optimization. His new development will enable coordinated drone delivery and may apply to any industry where multiple drones must effectively communicate while performing tasks simultaneously.
Kim's work is decribed in "On Theoretical Trajectory Planning of Multiple Drones to Minimize Latency in Search-and-Reconnaissance Operation," which has been accepted for publication in the journal IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. In addition to Kim, the article is authored by Lirong Xue, Deying Li, Yuqing Zhu, Wei Wang, and Alade O. Tokuta.
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