An Improved Ant Colony Optimization for Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the feasibility and applicability of ant colony optimization in vehicle routing problem areas. Due to different vehicle capacities, a mathematical formulation, which considers the variable costs and the vehicles' fixed costs simultaneously, is given. Due to the inherent complexity of the vehicle routing problem (VRP), an improved ant colony optimization with a new strategy to update the increased pheromone (Ant-Weight strategy) and the 2-opt exchange is developed. Finally, the proposed algorithm is examined with the data of Wuhu in China. The results indicate that this method performs well in terms of the solution quality and run time consumed.