Download or read book Optimized Dynamic Vehicle Routing Policies with Applications written by Yingwei Lin and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: This dissertation addresses two applications: (a) optimizing dynamic vehicle routing policies in warehouse forklift dispatching, and (b) reward collection by a group of air vehicles in a 3-dimensional mission space. For the first application, we successfully deployed an inexpensive mobile Wireless Sensor Network in a commercial warehouse served by a fleet of forklifts, aiming at improving forklift dispatching and reducing costs associated with the delays of loading/unloading delivery trucks. The forklifts were instrumented with sensor nodes that collect an array of information, including the forklifts' physical location, usage time, bumping/collision history, and battery status in an event-driven manner. A hypothesis testing algorithm was implemented to capture the location information. Combined with inventory information, the acquired information was fed into an Actor-Critic type stochastic optimization method to generate dispatching decisions. For the second application, we considered an application where mobile vehicles (agents) fly in a forest with obstacles. They "chase" potentially moving targets that carry rewards, which the agents wish to collect by approaching the targets. We cast the problem into a Markov Decision Process framework. In order to seek an optimal policy that maximizes the long-term average reward collection, and to conquer the curse of dimensionality, we propose an approximate dynamic programming algorithm termed Distributed Actor-Critic Algorithm. Motivated by the way animals move while hunting for food, we incorporated several bio-inspired features into our control policy structure. Simulation results demonstrate that the policies with these bio-inspired features lead to a higher reward collection rate compared to the non-bio-inspired counterparts; by 40% in some examples. We also considered a setting where targets have intelligence and try to move away from agents in order to minimize the reward being collected. The problem is formulated as a Pursuit Evasion Game. Assuming that the targets also use an Actor-Critic method to optimize their control policy, we have shown that the game converges to a Local Nash Equilibrium. Furthermore, we proposed an Actor-Critic with Simulated Annealing (ACSA) algorithm, and established that the game converges to a Nash Equilibrium. Simulation results show that the ACSA algorithm can achieve a higher reward collection rate for both stationary and moving targets.

Download or read book Vehicle Routing written by Paolo Toth and published by SIAM. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, garbage collection, newspaper delivery, etc.). Operations researchers have made significant developments in the algorithms for their solution, and Vehicle Routing: Problems, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition reflects these advances. The text of the new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive and complete state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing by those who have done most of the innovative research in the area; it emphasizes methodology related to specific classes of vehicle routing problems and, since vehicle routing is used as a benchmark for all new solution techniques, contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing.

Download or read book Approximate Dynamic Programming for Dynamic Vehicle Routing written by Marlin Wolf Ulmer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a straightforward overview for every researcher interested in stochastic dynamic vehicle routing problems (SDVRPs). The book is written for both the applied researcher looking for suitable solution approaches for particular problems as well as for the theoretical researcher looking for effective and efficient methods of stochastic dynamic optimization and approximate dynamic programming (ADP). To this end, the book contains two parts. In the first part, the general methodology required for modeling and approaching SDVRPs is presented. It presents adapted and new, general anticipatory methods of ADP tailored to the needs of dynamic vehicle routing. Since stochastic dynamic optimization is often complex and may not always be intuitive on first glance, the author accompanies the ADP-methodology with illustrative examples from the field of SDVRPs. The second part of this book then depicts the application of the theory to a specific SDVRP. The process starts from the real-world application. The author describes a SDVRP with stochastic customer requests often addressed in the literature, and then shows in detail how this problem can be modeled as a Markov decision process and presents several anticipatory solution approaches based on ADP. In an extensive computational study, he shows the advantages of the presented approaches compared to conventional heuristics. To allow deep insights in the functionality of ADP, he presents a comprehensive analysis of the ADP approaches.

Download or read book Optimal Policies for Stochastic and Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems written by Haiping Xu and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Evolution of the Vehicle Routing Problem written by Bruce Golden and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents state-of-the-art research and practice in optimization routing, specifically the vehicle routing problem (VRP). Since its introduction in the late 1950s, the VRP has been a very significant area of research and practice in operations research. Vehicles are used to make deliveries and for pick-ups every day and everywhere. Companies such as Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and DHL use route optimization to reduce mileage, fuel use, number of trucks on the road, and carbon dioxide emissions. The authors compile and analyze 135 survey and review articles on vehicle routing topics published between 2005 and 2022 in an effort to make key observations about publication and trend history, summarize the overall contributions in the field, and identify trends in VRP research and practice. The authors have compiled published research on models, algorithms, and applications for specific areas, including: alternative and multiple objectives; arc routing and general routing; drones, last-mile delivery, and urban distribution; dynamic and stochastic routing; green routing; inventory routing; loading constraints; location-routing; multiple depots; pickup and delivery and dial-a-ride problems; rich and multi-attribute routing; routing over time; shipping; two-echelon, collaborative, and inter-terminal problems; specific variants, benchmark datasets, and software; and exact algorithms and heuristics. In addition, the book discusses how vehicle routing problems are among the most widely studied problems in combinatorial optimization due to the mathematical complexity and practical significance.

Download or read book The Vehicle Routing Problem written by Paolo Toth and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Strategic Dynamic Vehicle Routing with Spatio temporal Dependent Demands written by Diego Francisco Feijer Rovira Feijer and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dynamic vehicle routing problems address the issue of determining optimal routes for a set of vehicles, to serve a given set of demands that arrive sequentially in time. Traditionally, demands are assumed to be generated over time by an exogenous stochastic process. This thesis is concerned with the study of dynamic vehicle routing problems where demands are strategically placed in the space by an agent with selfish interests and physical constraints. In particular, we focus on the following problem: a team of vehicles seek to device dynamic routing policies that minimize the average waiting time of a typical demand, from the moment it is placed in the space until its location is visited; while an adversarial agent operating from a central depot with limited capacity aims at the opposite, strategically choosing the spatio-temporal point process according to which place demands. We model the above problem and its inherent pure conflict of interests as a zero-sum game, and characterize equilibria under heavy load regime. For the analysis we discriminate between two cases: bounded and unbounded domains. In both cases we show that a routing policy based on performing successive TSP tours through outstanding demands and a power-law spatial distribution of demands are optimal, saddle point of the utility function of the game. The latter emerges as the unique solution of maximizing a non-convex nowhere differentiable functional over the infinite-dimensional space of probability densities; the non-convexity is the result of the spatio-temporal dependence induced by the physical constraints imposed on the behavior of the agent, and the non-differentiability is due to the emptiness of the interior of the positive cone of integrable functions. We solve this problem applying Fenchel conjugate duality for partially finite programming in the case of bounded domains; and a direct duality approach exploiting the structure of a concave integral functional part of the objective and the linear equality constraints, for unbounded domains. Remarkably, all the results obtained hold for any domain with a sufficiently smooth boundary, clossedness or connectedness is not needed. We provide numerical simulations to validate the theory.

Download or read book The Vehicle Routing Problem Latest Advances and New Challenges written by Bruce L. Golden and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-07-20 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a unified and carefully developed presentation, this book systematically examines recent developments in VRP. The book focuses on a portfolio of significant technical advances that have evolved over the past few years for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems and VRP variations. Reflecting the most recent scholarship, this book is written by one of the top research scholars in Vehicle Routing and is one of the most important books in VRP to be published in recent times.

Download or read book Pro active Dynamic Vehicle Routing written by Francesco Ferrucci and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with transportation processes denoted as the Real-time Distribution of Perishable Goods (RDOPG). The book presents three contributions that are made to the field of transportation. First, a model considering the minimization of customer inconvenience is formulated. Second, a pro-active real-time control approach is proposed. Stochastic knowledge is generated from past request information by a new forecasting approach and is used in the pro-active approach to guide vehicles to request-likely areas before real requests arrive there. Various computational results are presented to show that in many cases the pro-active approach is able to achieve significantly improved results. Moreover, a measure for determining the structural quality of request data sets is also proposed. The third contribution of this book is a method that is presented for considering driver inconvenience aspects which arise from vehicle en-route diversion activities. Specifically, this method makes it possible to restrict the number of performed vehicle en-route diversion activities.​

Download or read book Dynamic Vehicle Routing for Robotic Networks written by Marco Pavone (Ph. D.) and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed great advancements in the sciences and technology of autonomy, robotics and networking. This dissertation develops concepts and algorithms for dynamic vehicle routing (DVR), that is, for the automatic planning of optimal multi-vehicle routes to provide service to demands (or more generally to perform tasks) that are generated over time by an exogenous process. We consider a rich variety of scenarios relevant for robotic applications. We begin by reviewing some of the approaches available to tackle DVR problems. Next, we study different multi-vehicle scenarios based on different models for demands (in particular, demands with time constraints, demands with different priority levels, and demands that must be transported from a pick-up to a delivery location). The performance criterion used in these scenarios is either the expected waiting time of the demands or the fraction of demands serviced successfully. In each specific DVR scenario we adopt a rigorous technical approach, which we call algorithmic queueing theory and which relies upon methods from queueing theory, combinatorial optimization, and stochastic geometry. Algorithmic queueing theory consists of three basics steps: 1) queueing model of the DVR problem and analysis of its structure; 2) establishment of fundamental limitations on performance, independent of algorithms; and 3) design of algorithms that are either optimal or constant-factor away from optimal. In the second part of the dissertation, we address problems concerning the implementation of routing policies in large-scale robotic networks, such as adaptivity and decentralized computation. We first present distributed algorithms for environment partitioning, and then we apply them to devise routing policies for DVR problems that (i) are spatially distributed, scalable to large networks, and adaptive to network changes, and (ii) have remarkably good performance guarantees. The technical approach developed in this dissertation is applicable to a wide variety of DVR problems: several possible extensions are discussed throughout the thesis.

Download or read book Solving Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems written by Mostepha Redouane Khouadjia and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many problems in the real world have dynamic nature and can be modeled as dynamic combinatorial optimization problems. However, research on dynamic optimization focuses on continuous optimization problems, and rarely targets combinatorial problems. One of the applications in dynamic combinatorial problems that has received a growing interest during the last decades is the on-line or dynamic transportation systems. A typical problem of this domain is the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems (DVRPs). In this latter, the dynamism can be attributed to several factors (weather condition, new customer order, cancellation of old demand, vehicle broken down, etc.). In such application, information on the problem is not completely known a priori, but instead is revealed to the decision maker progressively with time. Consequently, solutions for different instances have to be found as time proceeds, concurrently with managing the incoming information. Such problems call for a methodology to track their optimal solutions through time. In this thesis, dynamic vehicle routing problem is addressed and developing general methodologies called metaheuristics to tackle this problem is investigated. Their ability to adapt to the changing environment and their robustness are discussed. Results of experiments demonstrate thanks to dynamic performance measures that our methods are effective on this problem and hence have a great potential for other dynamic combinatorial problems.

Download or read book Column Generation written by Guy Desaulniers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-20 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

Download or read book Approximate Dynamic Programming written by Warren B. Powell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-10-05 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete and accessible introduction to the real-world applications of approximate dynamic programming With the growing levels of sophistication in modern-day operations, it is vital for practitioners to understand how to approach, model, and solve complex industrial problems. Approximate Dynamic Programming is a result of the author's decades of experience working in large industrial settings to develop practical and high-quality solutions to problems that involve making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. This groundbreaking book uniquely integrates four distinct disciplines—Markov design processes, mathematical programming, simulation, and statistics—to demonstrate how to successfully model and solve a wide range of real-life problems using the techniques of approximate dynamic programming (ADP). The reader is introduced to the three curses of dimensionality that impact complex problems and is also shown how the post-decision state variable allows for the use of classical algorithmic strategies from operations research to treat complex stochastic optimization problems. Designed as an introduction and assuming no prior training in dynamic programming of any form, Approximate Dynamic Programming contains dozens of algorithms that are intended to serve as a starting point in the design of practical solutions for real problems. The book provides detailed coverage of implementation challenges including: modeling complex sequential decision processes under uncertainty, identifying robust policies, designing and estimating value function approximations, choosing effective stepsize rules, and resolving convergence issues. With a focus on modeling and algorithms in conjunction with the language of mainstream operations research, artificial intelligence, and control theory, Approximate Dynamic Programming: Models complex, high-dimensional problems in a natural and practical way, which draws on years of industrial projects Introduces and emphasizes the power of estimating a value function around the post-decision state, allowing solution algorithms to be broken down into three fundamental steps: classical simulation, classical optimization, and classical statistics Presents a thorough discussion of recursive estimation, including fundamental theory and a number of issues that arise in the development of practical algorithms Offers a variety of methods for approximating dynamic programs that have appeared in previous literature, but that have never been presented in the coherent format of a book Motivated by examples from modern-day operations research, Approximate Dynamic Programming is an accessible introduction to dynamic modeling and is also a valuable guide for the development of high-quality solutions to problems that exist in operations research and engineering. The clear and precise presentation of the material makes this an appropriate text for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, while also serving as a reference for researchers and practitioners. A companion Web site is available for readers, which includes additional exercises, solutions to exercises, and data sets to reinforce the book's main concepts.

Download or read book Combinatorial Optimization and Applications written by Teodor Gabriel Crainic and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Optimization and Applications written by Milojica Jaćimović and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-08 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Optimization and Applications, OPTIMA 2019, held in Petrovac, Montenegro, in September-October 2019. The 35 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. The papers cover such topics as optimization, operations research, optimal control, game theory, and their numerous applications in practical problems of operations research, data analysis, and software development.

Download or read book Combinatorial Optimization and Applications written by Zaixin Lu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications, COCOA 2015, held in Houston, TX, USA, in December 2015. The 59 full papers included in the book were carefully reviewed and selected from 125 submissions. Topics covered include classic combinatorial optimization; geometric optimization; network optimization; applied optimization; complexity and game; and optimization in graphs.

Download or read book The International Conference on Advanced Machine Learning Technologies and Applications AMLTA2019 written by Aboul Ella Hassanien and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-16 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Advanced Machine Learning Technologies and Applications (AMLTA 2019), held in Cairo, Egypt, on March 28–30, 2019, and organized by the Scientific Research Group in Egypt (SRGE). The papers cover the latest research on machine learning, deep learning, biomedical engineering, control and chaotic systems, text mining, summarization and language identification, machine learning in image processing, renewable energy, cyber security, and intelligence swarms and optimization.