An Ant Colony Optimization Method for Prize-collecting Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows

Focused on a variation of the Euclidean traveling salesman problem (TSP), namely the prize-collecting traveling salesman problem with time windows (PCTSPTW), this paper presents a novel ant colony optimization solving method. The time window constraints are considered in the computation for the probability of selection of the next city. The parameters of the algorithm are analyzed by experiments. Numerical results also show that the proposed method is effective for the PCTSPTW problem.

[1]  Luca Maria Gambardella,et al.  Ant colony system: a cooperative learning approach to the traveling salesman problem , 1997, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[2]  Lixin Tang,et al.  Solving Prize-Collecting Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows by Chaotic Neural Network , 2007, ISNN.

[3]  G. Di Caro,et al.  Ant colony optimization: a new meta-heuristic , 1999, Proceedings of the 1999 Congress on Evolutionary Computation-CEC99 (Cat. No. 99TH8406).

[4]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents , 1996, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part B.

[5]  Reuven Bar-Yehuda,et al.  On approximating a geometric prize-collecting traveling salesman problem with time windows , 2005, J. Algorithms.

[6]  George L. Nemhauser,et al.  The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Survey , 1968, Oper. Res..

[7]  Vangelis Th. Paschos,et al.  Algorithms for the On-Line Quota Traveling Salesman Problem , 2004, Inf. Process. Lett..

[8]  Kalyanmoy Deb,et al.  Messy Genetic Algorithms: Motivation, Analysis, and First Results , 1989, Complex Syst..

[9]  Moshe Dror,et al.  Note on the Complexity of the Shortest Path Models for Column Generation in VRPTW , 1994, Oper. Res..

[10]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Optimization, Learning and Natural Algorithms , 1992 .

[11]  T. Munakata,et al.  Temperature control for simulated annealing. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  Chunguang Zhou,et al.  Hybrid ant colony algorithm for traveling salesman problem , 2003 .

[13]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  The ant colony optimization meta-heuristic , 1999 .

[14]  T. Stützle,et al.  MAX-MIN Ant System and local search for the traveling salesman problem , 1997, Proceedings of 1997 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC '97).

[15]  John N. Tsitsiklis,et al.  Special cases of traveling salesman and repairman problems with time windows , 1992, Networks.