A bi-population immune algorithm for weapon transportation support scheduling problem with pickup and delivery on aircraft carrier deck

The weapon transportation support scheduling problem on aircraft carrier deck is the key to restricting the sortie rate and combat capability of carrier-based aircraft.This paper studies the problem and presents a novel solution architecture.Taking the interference of the carrier-based aircraft deck layout on the weapon transportation route and precedence constraint into consideration,a mixed integer formulation is established to minimize the total objective,which is constituted of makespan,load variance and accumulative transfer time of support unit.Solution approach is developed for the model.Firstly,based on modeling the carrier aircraft parked on deck as convex obstacles,the path library of weapon transportation is constructed through visibility graph and Warshall-Floyd methods.We then propose a bi-population immune algorithm in which a population-based forward/backward scheduling technique,local search schemes and a chaotic catastrophe operator are embedded.Besides,the randomkey solution representation and serial scheduling generation scheme are adopted to conveniently obtain a better solution.The Taguchi method is additionally employed to determine key parameters of the algorithm.Finally,on a set of generated realistic instances,we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms all compared algorithms designed for similar optimization problems and can significantly improve the efficiency,and that the established model and the bi-population immune algorithm can effectively respond to the weapon support requirements of carrier-based aircraft under different sortie missions.

A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Pickup and Delivery

In this paper, a hybrid genetic algorithm （GA） is proposed for the traveling salesman problem （TSP） with pickup and delivery （TSPPD）. In our algorithm, a novel pheromone-based crossover operator is advanced that utilizes both local and global information to construct offspring. In addition, a local search procedure is integrated into the GA to accelerate convergence. The proposed GA has been tested on benchmark instances, and the computational results show that it gives better convergence than existing heuristics.

Solving Multitrip Pickup and Delivery Problem With Time Windows and Manpower Planning Using Multiobjective Algorithms

The multitrip pickup and delivery problem with time windows and manpower planning(MTPDPTW-MP)determines a set of ambulance routes and finds staff assignment for a hospital. It involves different stakeholders with diverse interests and objectives. This study firstly introduces a multiobjective MTPDPTW-MP(MO-MTPDPTWMP) with three objectives to better describe the real-world scenario. A multiobjective iterated local search algorithm with adaptive neighborhood selection(MOILS-ANS) is proposed to solve the problem. MOILS-ANS can generate a diverse set of alternative solutions for decision makers to meet their requirements. To better explore the search space, problem-specific neighborhood structures and an adaptive neighborhood selection strategy are carefully designed in MOILS-ANS. Experimental results show that the proposed MOILS-ANS significantly outperforms the other two multiobjective algorithms. Besides, the nature of objective functions and the properties of the problem are analyzed. Finally, the proposed MOILS-ANS is compared with the previous single-objective algorithm and the benefits of multiobjective optimization are discussed.

Complete Coverage Path Planning Based on Improved Area Division

It is difficult to solve complete coverage path planning directly in the obstructed area. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method of complete coverage path planning with improved area division. Firstly, the boustrophedon cell decomposition method is used to partition the map into sub-regions. The complete coverage paths within each sub-region are obtained by the Boustrophedon back-and-forth motions, and the order of traversal of the sub-regions is then described as a generalised traveling salesman problem with pickup and delivery based on the relative positions of the vertices of each sub-region. An adaptive large neighbourhood algorithm is proposed to quickly obtain solution results in traversal order. The effectiveness of the improved algorithm on traversal cost reduction is verified in this paper through multiple sets of experiments. .

Hybrid Clustering Algorithms with GRASP to Construct an Initial Solution for the MVPPDP

Mobile commerce(m-commerce)contributes to increasing the popularity of electronic commerce(e-commerce),allowing anybody to sell or buy goods using a mobile device or tablet anywhere and at any time.As demand for e-commerce increases tremendously,the pressure on delivery companies increases to organise their transportation plans to achieve profits and customer satisfaction.One important planning problem in this domain is the multi-vehicle profitable pickup and delivery problem(MVPPDP),where a selected set of pickup and delivery customers need to be served within certain allowed trip time.In this paper,we proposed hybrid clustering algorithms with the greedy randomised adaptive search procedure(GRASP)to construct an initial solution for the MVPPDP.Our approaches first cluster the search space in order to reduce its dimensionality,then use GRASP to build routes for each cluster.We compared our results with state-of-the-art construction heuristics that have been used to construct initial solutions to this problem.Experimental results show that our proposed algorithms contribute to achieving excellent performance in terms of both quality of solutions and processing time.

Approximation Algorithms for Multi-vehicle Stacker Crane Problems

We study a variety of multi-vehicle generalizations of the Stacker Crane Problem(SCP).The input consists of a mixed graph G=(V,E,A)with vertex set V,edge set E and arc set A,and a nonnegative integer cost function c on E∪A.We consider the following three problems:(1)k-depot SCP(k-DSCP).There is a depot set D⊆V containing k distinct depots.The goal is to determine a collection of k closed walks including all the arcs of A such that the total cost of the closed walks is minimized,where each closed walk corresponds to the route of one vehicle and has to start from a distinct depot and return to it.(2)k-SCP.There are no given depots,and each vehicle may start from any vertex and then go back to it.The objective is to find a collection of k closed walks including all the arcs of A such that the total cost of the closed walks is minimized.(3)k-depot Stacker Crane Path Problem(k-DSCPP).There is a depot set D⊆V containing k distinct depots.The aim is to find k(open)walks including all the arcs of A such that the total cost of the walks is minimized,where each(open)walk has to start from a distinct depot but may end at any vertex.We present the first constant-factor approximation algorithms for all the above three problems.To be specific,we give 3-approximation algorithms for the k-DSCP,the k-SCP and the k-DSCPP.If the costs of the arcs are symmetric,i.e.,for every arc there is a parallel edge of no greater cost,we develop better algorithms with approximation ratios max{9/5,2−1/2k+1},2,2,respectively.All the proposed algorithms have a time complexity of O(|V|3)except that the two 2-approximation algorithms run in O(|V|2log|V|)time.