Cluster-Based Positioning Method of Drone Charging Station for Enlargement of Delivery Area

Charging stations are expected to allow drones to fly farther and deliver multiple parcels in a single mission. This paper proposed a cluster-based positioning method to enlarge the delivery area that can be covered by drones. The charging station were placed in centroids of clusters, which consists of two stages clustering using k-means. We showed that the first stage of clustering does not always guarantee high coverage but should allow more space for the second stage to grow the coverage area. In the application example, we showed that we could increase the coverage rate and clustering at the 1st stage has more gap and 2nd stage has more overlap in the coverage area.