Vehicle Scheduling Problem Based on the Virtual Nodes and Weight Factors of Traffic Complexity

This paper proposes a vehicle scheduling problem of urban logistics delivery based on the virtual nodes and weight factors of traffic complexity, in consideration of time window constraint, capacity constraint and so on. The virtual nodes and the customer points are abstracted based on the real graph structure. In this paper, the intersections related to customer points are considered as virtual nodes. The vehicle scheduling will be based on virtual nodes and customer points. The sequences of solution in the vehicle routing contain not only customer points, but also virtual nodes, which is more realistic. Roads are related by virtual nodes and customer points, which are identified by weight factors of traffic complexity, the weight factors reflects the traffic congestion and the weather conditions of the roads. This article employs an optimal insertion algorithm to gain initial solution of the problem, and the improved tabu search algorithm is used to generate the optimum solution. In the end of this paper, experiments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of algorithms.