A run in the wind: favorable winds make the difference in drone delivery

The impact on the energy consumption of flying drones in favorable winds is investigated in this paper. A tandem system is considered, with only one drone and one truck. The truck moves on a predefined route and brings the drone close to the delivery point. Then, the drone plans its service route by choosing the take-off and landing points from which the delivery will be performed. We propose a constant time algorithm OSR to plan the drone route with minimum-energy service when the truck moves on a line in front of the deliveries (i.e., highway). Then, we devise the algorithm MS-OSR to plan a drone minimum-energy service route when the truck moves on a multiline that bounds a convex area where the deliveries take place. We found that OSR and MS-OSR plan drone service routes that save at least 30% and 60%, respectively, of the energy consumed by connecting the delivery and the truck following the shortest route, that is, following the perpendicular segment between the delivery point and the truck’s route.