Article information

2018 , Volume 23, ¹ 5, p.49-62

Dolgova O.E., Peresvetov V.V.

An ant colony optimization algorithm with time relaxed window constraints for solving the vehicle routing problem

The purpose of this paper is to improve the performance of a hybrid method based on ant colony optimization (ACO) that finds approximate solutions of the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). In order to solve this problem it is required to design a plan for goods delivery to the customers generating the routes of identical vehicles so that the total travelled distance is minimal.

For the VRPTW solving, the hybrid method is developed in which a usage of trial solutions makes it possible to explore the most promising parts of the search space. The initial methods for solution construction, an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm and local search are proposed in the framework of the hybrid method. In the ACO algorithm, when generating the routes, it is allowed to violate the time window constraints. A method to restore the feasibility of solutions is implemented within the relaxation scheme under “returns in time” principle.

Numerical results for solving all problems with 25, 50 and 100 clients from the Solomon test set are obtained. We provide the results on the time and error of the solution of these problems in comparison with the results of other authors. Some problems and their classes were solved much faster by the algorithm proposed in this paper. Relative deviations from optimal values of the objective function for the most complex tasks decrease with increasing decision time.

The proposed approach can be considered to be an additional or an alternative algorithm for solving the cluster type and the long-term planning horizon problems of the VRPTW.

[full text]
Keywords: vehicle routing, time windows, total travelled distance, hybrid algorithm, ant colony optimization, local search

doi: 10.25743/ICT.2018.23.5.005

Author(s):
Dolgova Olga Eduardovna
Position: Junior Research Scientist
Office: Computing center of Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: 680000, Russia, Khabarovsk, Kim-Yu-Chena str., 65
Phone Office: (4212)22-72-67
E-mail: o.dolgova@live.ru
SPIN-code: 8693-1032

Peresvetov Vladimir Victorovich
PhD.
Position: Senior Research Scientist
Office: Computing center of Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: 680000, Russia, Khabarovsk, Kim-Yu-Chena str., 65
Phone Office: (4212)22-72-67
E-mail: peresvv@mail.ru

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Bibliography link:
Dolgova O.E., Peresvetov V.V. An ant colony optimization algorithm with time relaxed window constraints for solving the vehicle routing problem // Computational technologies. 2018. V. 23. ¹ 5. P. 49-62
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