Ant Colony Solving Multiple Constraints Problem: Vehicle Route Allocation

Abstract

Ant colonies are successfully used nowadays as multi-agent systems (MAS) to solve difficult optimization problems such as travelling salesman (TSP), quadratic assignment (QAP), vehicle routing (VRP), graph coloring and satisfiability problem. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to adapt an improved version of Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) algorithm, mainly: the Elitist Ant System (EAS) algorithm in order to solve the Vehicle Route Allocation Problem (VRAP). After a brief introduction in the first section about MAS and their characteristics, the paper presents the rationale within the second section where ACO algorithm and its common extensions are described. In the approach (the third section) are explained the steps that must be followed in order to adapt EAS for solving the VRAP. The resulted algorithm is illustrated in the fourth section. Section five closes the paper presenting the conclusions and intentions.