UAV routing with genetic algorithm based matheuristic for border security missions

In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a good alternative for the problem of ensuring the security of the borders of the countries. UAVs are preferred because of their speed, ease of use, being able to observe many points at the same time, and being more cost-effective in total compared to other security tools. This study is dealt with the problem of the use of UAVs for the security of the Turkey-Syria borderline which becomes sensitive in recent years and the problem is modeled as a UAV routing problem. To solve the problem, a Genetic Algorithm Based Matheuristic (GABM) approach has been developed and 12 scenarios have been created covering the departure bases, daily patrol numbers, and ranges of UAVs. GABM finds the minimum number of UAVs to use in scenarios with the help of a GA run first and tries to find the optimal routes for these UAVs. If GABM can find an optimal route for the determined UAV number, it decreases the UAV number and tries to solve the problem again. GABM proposes a hybrid approach in which a metaheuristic with a mathematical model works together and the metaheuristic sets an upper limit for the number of UAVs in the model. In computational studies, when compared GA with GABM it is seen that GABM has obtained good results and decreased the utilized number of UAVs (up to 400%) and their flight distances (up to 85.99%) for the problem in very short CPU times (max. 122.17 s. for GA and max. 46.39 s. for GABM in addition to GA).