A Compositional Algorithm for the Conflict-Free Electric Vehicle Routing Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compositional algorithm for the Conflict-Free Electric Vehicle Routing Problem, effectively handling constraints like time windows, limited range, and road capacity, and demonstrates its efficiency on large-scale problems.

Contribution

The paper presents the ComSat algorithm, a novel compositional approach using an SMT-solver to solve CF-EVRP efficiently and proves its soundness, completeness, and industrial applicability.

Findings

Successfully solves large-scale industrial problems

Proven to be sound and complete

Outperforms previous monolithic models

Abstract

The Conflict-Free Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (CF-EVRP) is an extension of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), a combinatorial optimization problem of designing routes for vehicles to visit customers such that a cost function, typically the number of vehicles or the total travelled distance, is minimized. The problem finds many logistics applications, particularly for highly automated logistic systems for material handling. The CF-EVRP involves constraints such as time windows on the delivery to the customers, limited operating range of the vehicles, and limited capacity on the number of vehicles that a road segment can accommodate at the same time. In this paper, the compositional algorithm ComSat for solving the CF-EVRP is presented. The algorithm iterates through the sub-problems until a globally feasible solution is found. The proposed algorithm is implemented using an optimizing SMT-solver and is evaluated against an implementation of a previously presented monolithic model. The soundness and completeness of the algorithm are proven, and it is benchmarked on a set of generated problems and found to be able to solve problems of industrial size.