We introduce and study a new cooperative delivery problem inspired by drone-assisted package delivery. We consider a scenario where a drone, en route to deliver a package to a destination (a point on the plane), unexpectedly loses communication with its central command station. The command station cannot know whether the drone's system has wholly malfunctioned or merely experienced a communications failure. Consequently, a second, helper drone must be deployed to retrieve the package to ensure successful delivery. The central question of this study is to find the optimal trajectory for this second drone. We demonstrate that the optimal solution relies heavily on the relative spatial positioning of the command station, the destination point, and the last known location of the disconnected drone.

翻译：我们提出并研究了一种受无人机包裹递送启发的新型协作递送问题。考虑以下场景：一架无人机在向目的地（平面上的某点）运送包裹途中，意外与中央指挥站失去通信联系。指挥站无法判断该无人机的系统是完全故障还是仅发生通信中断。因此，需部署第二架辅助无人机取回包裹以确保成功递送。本研究的核心问题在于求解该辅助无人机的最优轨迹。我们证明，最优解主要取决于指挥站、目的地点以及失联无人机最后已知位置三者之间的空间相对位置关系。