Skip to main content

A Novel Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem

  • Conference paper
Swarm, Evolutionary, and Memetic Computing (SEMCCO 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8297))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most important problems in the field of Operations Research and logistics. This paper presents a novel Ant Colony Optimization algorithm abbreviated as ACO_PLM to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem efficiently. By virtue of this algorithm we wish to propose novel pheromone deposition, local search & mutation strategies to solve the VRP efficiently and facilitate rapid convergence. The ACO_PLM provides better results compared to other heuristics, which is apparent from the experimental results and comparisons with other existing algorithms when tested on the twelve benchmark instances.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Christofides, N., Mingozzi, A., Toth, P.: The vehicle routing problem. Combinatorial optimization. Combinatorial Optimization 11, 315–338 (1979)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Clarke, G., Wright, J.W.: Scheduling of vehicles from a central depot to a a number of delivery points. Operations Research 12, 568–581 (1964)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Taillard, R.E.: Parallel iterative search methods for vehicle routing problems. Networks 23, 661–673 (1993)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Chiang, W.C., Russell, R.: Simulated annealing meta-heuristics for the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Annals of Operations Research 93, 3–27 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Osman, I.H.: Metastrategy simulated annealing and tabu search algorithms for the vehicle routing problem. Annals of Operations Research 41, 421–451 (1993)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Berger, J., Barkaoui, M.: An Improved Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for theVehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. In: International ICSC Symposium on Computational Intelligence, Part of the International ICSC Congress on Intelligent Systems and Applications (ISA 2000), University of Wollongong, Wollongong (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Tan, K.C., Lee, L.H., Ou, K.: Hybrid Genetic Algorithms in Solving Vehicle Routing Problems with Time Window Constraints. Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research 18, 121–130 (2001)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Osman, M.S., Abo-Sinna, M.A., Mousa, A.A.: An effective genetic algorithm approach to multiobjective routing problems (morps). Applied Mathematics and Computation 163, 769–781 (2005)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Marinakis, Y., Marinaki, M.: A Hybrid Multi-Swarm Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem. Computers and Operations Research 37(3), 432–442 (2010)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Ai, J., Kachitvichyanukul, V.: A Study on Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems. In: The 9th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Reimann, M., Stummer, M., Doerner, K.: A savings based ant system for the vehicle routing problem. In: Langdon, W.B., et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2002). Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Stutzle, T., Dorigo, M.: ACO algorithms for the traveling salesman problem. In: Evolutionary Algorithms in Engineering and Computer Science, John Wiley and Sons (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Reinelt, G.: The traveling salesman: computational solutions for TSP applications. LNCS, vol. 840. Springer (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  14. McCormich, S.T., Pinedo, M.L., Shenker, S., Wolf, B.: Sequencing in an assembly line with blocking to minimize cycle time. Operations Research 37, 925–936 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Leisten, R.: Flowshop sequencing problems with limited buffer storage. International Journal of Production Research 28, 2085–2100 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kuntz, P., Layzell, P., Snyers, D.: A colony of ant-like agents for partitioning in VLSI technology. In: Husbands, P., Harvey, I. (eds.) Proc. of 4th European Conference on Artificial Life, pp. 417–424. MIT Press, Cambridge (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Bonabeau, E., Dorigo, M., Theraulaz, G.: Swarm Intelligence:From Natural to Artificial Systems. Oxford University Press (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bullnheimer, B., Hartl, R.F., Strauss, C.: Applying the ant system to the vehicle routing problem. In: Second Metaheuristics International Conference, MIC 1997, Sophia-Antipolis, France (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Chen, C.H., Ting, C.J.: An improved ant colony system algorithm for the vehicle routing problem. Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers 23(2), 115–126 (2006)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Bin, Y., Zhong-Zen, Y., Baozhen, Y.: An Improved ant colony optimization for the Vehicle Routing Problem. European Journal of Operational Research 196, 171–176 (2009)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Abraham, A., Konar, A., Samal, N.R., Das, S.: Stability Analysis of the Ant System Dynamics with Non-uniform Pheromone Deposition Rules. In: Proc. IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1103–1108 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Beasley, J.E.: OR-Library: distributing test problems by electronic mail. Journal of the Operational Research Society 41, 1069–1072 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Honglin, Y., Jijun, Y.: An Improved Genetic Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Rego, C., Roucairol, C.: A parallel tabu search algorithm using ejection chains for the vehicle routing problem. In: Meta-Heuristics, pp. 661–675. Springer US (1996)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Ganguly, S., Das, S. (2013). A Novel Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem. In: Panigrahi, B.K., Suganthan, P.N., Das, S., Dash, S.S. (eds) Swarm, Evolutionary, and Memetic Computing. SEMCCO 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8297. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03753-0_36

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03753-0_36

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-03752-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-03753-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics