Combining the A* Algorithm with Neural Networks to Solve the Team Orienteering Problem with Obstacles and Environmental Factors

This paper addresses the team orienteering problem applied to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), considering obstacle avoidance and environmental factors such as wind conditions and payload weight. The objective is to optimize UAV routes to maximize collected rewards while adhering to operational constraints. To achieve this, we employ a simheuristic algorithm for the overall route optimization, while integrating the A* algorithm to determine feasible paths between nodes that avoid obstacles in a 2D grid-based environment. Then, a feedforward neural network estimates travel time based on UAV speed, wind conditions, trajectory distance, and payload weight. This estimation is incorporated into the optimization process to improve route planning accuracy. Numerical experiments evaluate the impact of various parameters, including obstacle placement, UAV speed, wind conditions, and payload weight. These experiments include maps with 30 to 100 points of interest and varying obstacle densities and show that our hybrid method improves solution quality by up to 15% in total profit compared to a baseline approach. Furthermore, computation times remain within 5–10% of the baseline, showing that the added predictive layer maintains computational efficiency.