A solution to the service agent transport problem

We introduce a new problem in the area of scheduling and route planning operations called the service agent transport problem (SATP). Within the SATP, autonomous service agents must perform tasks at a number of locations. The agents are free to move between locations, however, the agents may also be transported throughout the region by a limited number of faster-moving transport agents. The goal of the SATP is to plan a schedule of service agent and transport agent actions such that all locations are serviced in the shortest amount of time. We pose the problem using a mixed-integer linear programming optimization framework, and compare several complexity reduction heuristics to the full optimization.