Location-Route Planning for VTOL Airport and UAV Urban Logistics Network – A Case Study of Tianjin

With the potential for fast, contactless and environmentally friendly delivery, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained increasing attention and application due to their cost-effectiveness and convenient and rapid delivery operations. In future cities, a multi-level airport that supports vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) of UAVs and forming a delivery network is necessary to improve delivery efficiency and provide a competitive advantage. This paper proposes a multi-level airport location-routing problem for UAVs that considers UAV flight energy consumption and operational costs. The goal is to minimise the number of locations and minimise delivery path planning while meeting delivery demands within the service range. Based on the traditional distribution centre site-path problem, the UAV distribution network is constructed to solve the problem of airport location and flight path planning, and the two-layer genetic algorithm is used to solve it. Based on this, the validity of the model and algorithm is verified using the urban area of Tianjin as an example. The experimental results show that the constructed model can be used for UAV airport layout planning, which is applicable to large-scale, multi-aircraft-type and multi-level airport layout planning. Data analysis results indicate that when the location layout of the vertical hub airport is on the edge of the VTOL points, both the flight distance and the total cost of the delivery network relatively increase. Increasing the payload capacity will reduce the number of UAV operations, but the total cost shows a decreasing-then-increasing trend. This study can provide a theoretical basis for the selection of airport sites and UAV types in future UAV urban delivery networks.