Two-dimensional pickup and delivery routing problem with loading constraints

Abstract

In this paper, a special case of the vehicle routing problem in which the demands consist in a set of rectangular two-dimensional weighted items is considered. The vehicles have a two-dimensional loading surface and a maximum weight capacity. These problems have a routing and a packing component. A framework to handle the loading of a vehicle is proposed. A Constraint Programming loading model based on a scheduling approach is developed. It is also shown that the non-overlapping rectangle constraint can be extended to handle a practical constraint called sequential loading constraint.