VRoptBees

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-56
Author(s):  
Thiago A.S. Masutti ◽  
Leandro Nunes de Castro

Combinatorial optimization problems are broadly studied in the literature. On the one hand, their challenging characteristics, such as the constraints and number of potential solutions, inspires their use to test new solution techniques. On the other hand, the practical application of these problems provides support of daily tasks of people and companies. Vehicle routing problems constitute a well-known class of combinatorial optimization problems, from which the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is one of the most elementary ones. TSP corresponds to finding the shortest route that visits all cities within a path returning to the start city. Despite its simplicity, the difficulty in finding its exact solution and its direct application in practical problems in multiple areas make it one of the most studied problems in the literature. Algorithms inspired by biological phenomena are being successfully applied to solve optimization tasks, mainly combinatorial optimization problems. Those inspired by the collective behavior of insects produce good results for solving such problems. This article proposes the VRoptBees, a framework inspired by honeybee behavior to tackle vehicle routing problems. The framework provides a flexible and modular tool to easily build solutions to vehicle routing problems. Together with the framework, two examples of implementation are described, one to solve the TSP and the other to solve the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). Tests were conducted with benchmark instances from the literature, showing competitive results.

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Laporte

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) are two of the most popular problems in the field of combinatorial optimization. Due to the study of these two problems, there has been a significant growth in families of exact and heuristic algorithms being used today. The purpose of this paper is to show how their study has fostered developments of the most popular algorithms now applied to the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. These include exact algorithms, classical heuristics and metaheuristics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750004
Author(s):  
Quang Dung Pham ◽  
Kim Thu Le ◽  
Hoang Thanh Nguyen ◽  
Van Dinh Pham ◽  
Quoc Trung Bui

Vehicle routing is a class of combinatorial optimization problems arising in the industry of transportation and logistics. The goal of these problems is to compute an optimal route plan for a set of vehicles for serving transport requests of customers. There are many variants of the vehicle routing problems: routing for delivering goods, routing for demand responsive transport (taxi, school bus, …). Each problem might have different constraints, objectives. In this paper, we introduce a Constraint-Based Local Search (CBLS) framework for general offline and online vehicle routing problems. We extend existing neighborhood structures in the literature by proposing new neighborhoods to facilitate the resolution of different class of vehicle routing problems in a unified platform. A novel feature of the framework is the available APIs for online vehicle routing problems where requests arrive online during the execution of the computed route plan. Experimental results on three vehicle routing problems (the min-max capacitated vehicle routing problem, the multi-vehicle covering tour problem, and the online people-andparcel share-a-ride taxis problem) show the modelling flexibility, genericity, extensibility and efficiency of the proposed framework.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Osaba ◽  
F. Diaz ◽  
R. Carballedo ◽  
E. Onieva ◽  
A. Perallos

Nowadays, the development of new metaheuristics for solving optimization problems is a topic of interest in the scientific community. In the literature, a large number of techniques of this kind can be found. Anyway, there are many recently proposed techniques, such as the artificial bee colony and imperialist competitive algorithm. This paper is focused on one recently published technique, the one called Golden Ball (GB). The GB is a multiple-population metaheuristic based on soccer concepts. Although it was designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems, until now, it has only been tested with two simple routing problems: the traveling salesman problem and the capacitated vehicle routing problem. In this paper, the GB is applied to four different combinatorial optimization problems. Two of them are routing problems, which are more complex than the previously used ones: the asymmetric traveling salesman problem and the vehicle routing problem with backhauls. Additionally, one constraint satisfaction problem (the n-queen problem) and one combinatorial design problem (the one-dimensional bin packing problem) have also been used. The outcomes obtained by GB are compared with the ones got by two different genetic algorithms and two distributed genetic algorithms. Additionally, two statistical tests are conducted to compare these results.


2011 ◽  
Vol 148-149 ◽  
pp. 1248-1251
Author(s):  
Xu Dong Wu

The iterated local search algorithm has been widely used in combinatorial optimization problems. A new fuel consumption objective for the vehicle routing problems was presented in this paper. A fuel consumption modal of the vehicle load is introduced and an improved iterated local search algorithm is used for the problem. An initial solution is generated by the Solomon I1 algorithm, and then the iterated local search algorithm is proposed for the fuel consumption optimization.


Author(s):  
Ольга Борисовна Маций

The solution to the problem of improving the management of the transport process depends not only on the level of modernization of vehicles and the degree of use of modern information technologies, but also on the choice of routes that reduce the cost of transporting goods and passengers. Actual working conditions of vehicles in road networks put forward a number of tasks for optimizing closed routes, which are based on the classic routing problem (VRP - Vehicle Routing Problem).VRP is one of the generalizations of the hard-to-solve traveling salesman problem. The traveling salesman task is NP-complete. It refers to the main tasks of combinatorial optimization and, forming a continuously replenished set of applications and generalizations, remains an urgent research topic. An exact solution to the traveling salesman problem can be found only by reducing the enumeration of the type of branches and boundaries, which are not always applicable in operational planning by vehicle traffic. Therefore, the development of new and improvement of currently known methods for solving routing problems, reducible to the traveling salesman problem, and their software implementation is both a theoretical and practically important problem.The article considers the class of routing problems reducible to the traveling salesman problem. It is shown that optimization tasks for closed routes (routing problems), which are an important part of transport logistics, occupy key positions in the management of the processes of moving goods and passengers with the support of modern information technologies. An obvious feature that combines the considered list of routing problems (the symmetric traveling salesman problem, the problem of packing in containers, the school bus problem) is that they are formulated as generalizations or variants of the NP-complete traveling salesman problem with restrictions that narrow the scope of feasible solutions. The strongest restrictions become insufficient solvability conditions, stimulating interest in the study of combinatorial optimization problems associated with the traveling salesman problem.


Author(s):  
Camelia-M. Pintea ◽  
Camelia Chira ◽  
Dan Dumitrescu

The idea of sensitivity in ant colony systems has been exploited in hybrid ant-based models with promising results for many combinatorial optimization problems. Heterogeneity is induced in the ant population by endowing individual ants with a certain level of sensitivity to the pheromone trail. The variable pheromone sensitivity within the same population of ants can potentially intensify the search while in the same time inducing diversity for the exploration of the environment. The performance of sensitive ant models is investigated for solving the generalized vehicle routing problem. Numerical results and comparisons are discussed and analysed with a focus on emphasizing any particular aspects and potential benefits related to hybrid ant-based models.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nevin Aydın

Inventory routing problem can be defined as forming the routes to serve to the retailers from the manufacturer, deciding on the quantity of the shipment to the retailers and deciding on the timing of the replenishments. The difference of inventory routing problems from vehicle routing problems is the consideration of the inventory positions of retailers and supplier, and making the decision accordingly. Inventory routing problems are complex in nature and they can be solved either theoretically or using a heuristics method. Metaheuristics is an emerging class of heuristics that can be applied to combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, we provide the relationship between vendor-managed inventory and inventory routing problem. The proposed genetic for solving vehicle routing problem is described in detail.


Author(s):  
Gilbert Laporte

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) are two of the most popular problems in the field of combinatorial optimization. Due to the study of these two problems, there has been a significant growth in families of exact and heuristic algorithms being used today. The purpose of this paper is to show how their study has fostered developments of the most popular algorithms now applied to the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. These include exact algorithms, classical heuristics and metaheuristics.


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petrica Pop ◽  
Corina Pop-Sitar

Classical combinatorial optimization problems can be generalized in a natural way by considering a related problem relative to a given partition of the nodes of the graph into node sets. In the literature one can find generalized problems such as: generalized minimum spanning tree, generalized traveling salesman problem, generalized Steiner tree problem, generalized vehicle routing problem, etc. These generalized problems typically belong to the class of NP-complete problems; they are harder than the classical ones, and nowadays are intensively studied due to their interesting properties and applications in the real world. Because of the complexity of finding the optimal or near-optimal solution in case of the generalized combinatorial optimization problems, great effort has been made, by many researchers, to develop efficient ways of their transformation into classical corresponding variants. We present in this paper an efficient way of transforming the generalized vehicle routing problem into the vehicle routing problem, and a new integer programming formulation of the problem.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artur Alves Pessoa ◽  
Michael Poss ◽  
Ruslan Sadykov ◽  
François Vanderbeck

Capacitated vehicle routing problems are widely studied combinatorial optimization problems, and branch-and-cut-and-price algorithms can solve instances harder than ever before. These models, however, neglect that demands volumes are often not known with precision when planning the vehicle routes, thus incentivizing decision makers to significantly overestimate the volumes for avoiding coping with infeasible routes. A robust formulation that models demand uncertainty through a knapsack polytope is considered. A new branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm for the problem is provided, which combines efficient algorithms for the problem with no uncertainty with profound results in robust combinatorial optimization and includes novel heuristics and new valid inequalities. The numerical results illustrate that the resulting approach is two orders of magnitude faster that the best algorithm from the literature, solving twice as many instances to optimality.


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