An improved genetic algorithm for solving the helicopter routing problem with time window in post-disaster rescue.

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a highly significant and extensively studied issue in post-disaster rescue. In recent years, there has been widespread utilization of helicopters for post-disaster rescue. However, efficiently dispatching helicopters to reach rescue sites in post-disaster rescue is a challenge. To address this issue, this study models the issue of dispatching helicopters as a specific variant of the VRP with time window (VRPTW). Considering that the VRPTW is an NP-hard problem, the genetic algorithm (GA) as one of the prominent evolutionary algorithms with robust optimization capabilities, is a good candidate to deal with this issue. In this study, an improved GA with a local search strategy and global search strategy is proposed. To begin, a cooperative initialization strategy is proposed to generate an initial population with high quality and diversity. Subsequently, a local search strategy is presented to improve the exploitation ability. Additionally, a global search strategy is embedded to enhance the global search performance. Finally, 56 instances extended from Solomon instances are utilized for conducting simulation tests. The simulation results indicate that the average relative percentage increase (RPI) of the distance travelled by helicopters as obtained by the proposed algorithm is 0.178, 0.027, 0.075 and 0.041 times smaller than the average RPIs obtained by the tabu search algorithm, ant colony optimization algorithm, hybrid GA and simulated annealing algorithm, respectively. Simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm is more efficient and effective for solving the VRPTW to reduce the driving distance of the helicopters in post-disaster rescue.

Vision-based human detection in wounded search task / 医疗卫生装备

Objective To design a vision-based detection method for rotated human bodies to fulfill unmanned wounded search in the rescue operation.Methods HOG (histogram of oriented gradient) which was the most successful visual feature in pedestrian detection was involved in,and the human detection in the wounded search task was realized by multi-directional detection.Furthermore,two human bodies datasets were established by imitating the views of unmanned ground vehicle (UGV)and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).Results The application to the two datasets proved the method's feasibility in UGV and UAV.Conclusion The method is robust to the in-plane rotations and out-plane rotations of human bodies,which is of vital significance to promote the efficiency of the wounded searching and rescuing.