Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

An Experimental Study of a Simple Ant Colony System for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Ant Algorithms (ANTS 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2463))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) involves scheduling and routing of a vehicle fleet to serve a given set of geographically distributed requests, subject to capacity and time constraints. This problem is encountered in a variety of industrial and service applications, ranging from logistics and transportation systems, to material handling systems in manufacturing. Due to the intrinsic complexity of the problem, heuristics are needed for analyzing and solving it under practical problem sizes. In this paper, a model of an Ant Colony System (ACS) is proposed to solve the VRPTW. The aim here is to investigate and analyze the performance of the foraging model of a single colony ACS to solve the VRPTW from an experimental point of view, with particular emphasis on different initial solution techniques and different visibility (desirability) functions. Finally, experimental analyses are performed to compare the proposed model to other metaheuristic techniques. The results show that the single colony ACS algorithm, despite its simple model, is quite competitive to other well know metaheuristic techniques.

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

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
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. Bonabeau, E., Dorigo, M. and Theraulaz, G.: Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems. New York: Oxford University Press (1999).

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Bullnheimer, B., Hartl, R. and Strauss, C: Applying the Ant System to the Vehicle Routing Problem. In: Voss S., Martello S., Osman I.H., Roucairol C. (eds.), Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimization, Kluwer: Boston (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bullnheimer, B., Hartl, R. and Strauss, C.: An improved ant system algorithm for the vehicle routing problem. Paper presented at the Sixth Viennese workshop on Optimal Control, Dynamic Games, Nonlinear Dynamics and Adaptive Systems, Vienna (Austria), May 21–23, 1997, to appear in: Annals of Operations Research, Dawid, Feichtinger and Hartl (eds.): Nonlinear Economic Dynamics and Control, (1999).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Chiang, W. and Russell, R.: Simulated Annealing Metaheuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Annals of Oper. Res. 63, (1996), 1–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Chiang, W. and Russell, R.: A reactive tabu search metaheuristic for the vehicle routing problem with time windows, INFORMS J. on Computing 9, 4 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Cordeau, J.-F., Desrosiers, G., Solomon, M. and Soumis, F., “The VRP with Time Windows”, in The Vehicle Routing Problem, Chapter 7, Paolo Toth and Daniele Vigo (eds), SIAM Monographs on Discrete Mathematics and Applications, 157–193, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Desrochers, M., Lenstra, J., Savelsbergh, J. and Soumis, F.: Vehicle routing with time windows: Optimization and approximation, in: B.L. Golden and AA. Assad(eds.), Vehicle Routing: Methods and Studies, North-Holland, Amsterdam, (1988), 85–105.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Desrosiers, J. Dumas, Y., Solomon, M., Soumis, F., Time constrained routing and scheduling, in: M. Ball, T. Magnanti, M. Monma, G. Nemhauser (Eds.), Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, vol. 8: Network Routing, Netherlands, Amsterdam, (1995), 35–139.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Dorigo, M., Maniezzo V., and Colorni, A.: The Ant System: Optimization by a Colony of Cooperating Agents, IEEE Trans. Sys. Man Cyb. B 26 (1996), 29–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Dorigo, M., Gambardella, L.: Ant Colony System: A Cooperative Learning Approach to the Traveling Salesman Problem, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comp. 1, No.1 (1997), 53–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Drop, M., Note on the complexity of the shortest path models for column generation in VRPTW, Operations Research 42, 5 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Taillard, E. Badeau, P. Gendreau, M., Guertin, F. and Potvin, J.: A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time Windows, Transportation Science 31, 2, (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gambardella, L., Taillard, E. and Agazzi, G.: MACS-VRPTW: A multiple Ant Colony system for vehicle routing problems with time windows. In D. Corne, M. Dorigo and F. Glover, editors, New Ideas in Optimization. McGraw-Hill (Also available as, Tech. Rep. IDSIA-06-99, IDSIA, Lugano, Switzerland), (1999).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Lenstra, J. and Rinnooy Kan, A.: Complexity of Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems, Networks 11, (1981), 221–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Solomon, M.: Algorithms for the vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems with Time Window constraints, Operations research 35, (1987), 254–265.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Thangiah, S., Osman, I. and Sun, T.,:Hybrid Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealing, and Tabu Search Methods for Vehicle Routing Problems with Time Windows. Technical Report 27, Computer Science Department, Slippery Rock University (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Tan, K.C., Lee, Q.L., Zhu, K.,Ou: Heuristic methods for vehicle routing problem with time windows, Artificial Intelligence in Engineering 15, Elsevier, (2001), 281–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, N2l 3G1, Waterloo, Canada

    Ismail Ellabib, Otman A. Basir & Paul Calamai

Authors
  1. Ismail Ellabib
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Otman A. Basir
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Paul Calamai
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIDIA, Université de Bruxelles, CP 194/6 Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt 50, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Marco Dorigo , Gianni Di Caro  & Michael Sampels ,  & 

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Ellabib, I., Basir, O.A., Calamai, P. (2002). An Experimental Study of a Simple Ant Colony System for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. In: Dorigo, M., Di Caro, G., Sampels, M. (eds) Ant Algorithms. ANTS 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2463. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45724-0_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45724-0_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44146-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45724-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation