A multi-agent vehicle routing system for garbage collection

Vehicle Routing Problem existed in the world for decades and there are different variants of the problem depending upon various scenarios. Attempts have been made to arrive at a generic solution applicable to all scenarios with limited success. Moreover, most of the existing solutions deals with static problems where all data are known a priori and the optimal route are arrived using this base data. But in reality, most of the data used to compute the optimal route varies in time and the result need not necessarily be the optimal route. With the advancement of technology, it is possible to capture these time varying data on a real time basis using Agents and can be incorporated to evolve an optimal route as time progress - transforming the static vehicle routing problem into a dynamic vehicle routing problem. In this project, a garbage management system is taken for study. An overall improvement in the performance of the system can be achieved by having an efficient collection and transportation mechanism. Modified Ant Colony Optimization based approach was used to solve the dynamic vehicle routing problem to finally arrive at the optimal routes to visit these collection points and back to the depot.