New Shades of the Vehicle Routing Problem: Emerging Problem Formulations and Computational Intelligence Solution Methods

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of recent advances in the field of the vehicle routing problem (VRP), based on papers published in high-quality journals during the period from January 2015 to July 2017. A distinctive feature of the presented survey is its focus on new versions of the VRP, which have recently emerged or gained momentum, and the corresponding new solution methods, with particular emphasis on computational intelligence (CI) approaches. The list of newly proposed or currently popular VRP formulations include last mile and same day delivery, crowdshipping, bike sharing systems, post-disaster response plans, local routing in large production or cargo plants, customer-centric VRP, autonomous delivery, unnamed aerial vehicle delivery, green VRP, waste collection VRP, rich VRP, or VRP with backhauls. Simultaneously, an adequate increase of interest in the application of traditional CI methods (e.g., genetic, memetic, ant colony or particle swarm optimization, simulated annealing, or their various hybrid versions) can be observed in the VRP domain. At the same time, approaches proven efficient in other optimization areas (e.g., hyperheuristics, methods based on Monte Carlo simulations, algorithms rooted in game theory and bi-level optimization-Stackelberg games, or cognitively motivated methods) have lately entered the VRP field and become a viable alternative to more traditional techniques. Since VRP is one of the fastest growing fields in the operations research area, we believe that an analysis of the recently published VRP papers from the perspective of their novelty in problem formulation and/or applied solution method can provide a true value for the CI community, especially young researchers entering the field and seeking challenges in this interesting and fast developing research area.