Review on Vehicle Routing Problem using Ant Colony Optimization

Abstract

Vehicle routing problem (VRP) concerns the transport of items from a depot to its number of customers using group of vehicles. VRP needs method to solve problem in terms of best route to service the customers. The solution must ensure that all the customer s are served under the operational constraints and minimizing the overall cost. The solution can be obtained using one of the metaheuristic techniques Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). In Ant colony optimization a colony of artificial ants altogether find good solutions to difficult discrete optimization problems. It is not possible for each ant to find a solution to the problem under consideration which is probably a poor one, good-quality solutions can only emerge only if there is collective interaction among the ants. They act concurrently and independently and there, by their decision making process, finds the most efficient route. ACO helps in finding the best optimal path in vehicle routing as well. This paper presents a review on the application of ACO for solving VRP. The paper is mainly concerned with Capacitated VRP (CVRP) to explain the ACO optimization of VPR problem. Keywords: VRP, ACO, Pheromone, metaheuristic, CVRP