Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2021, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (2): 365-379.doi: 10.23919/JSEE.2021.000030

• INTELLIGENT OPTIMIZATION AND SCHEDULING • Previous Articles     Next Articles

An improved estimation of distribution algorithm for multi-compartment electric vehicle routing problem

Yindong SHEN1,*(), Liwen PENG1(), Jingpeng LI2()   

  1. 1 Key Laboratory of Image Processing and Intelligent Control, School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
    2 Division of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK94LA, UK
  • Received:2020-11-30 Online:2021-04-29 Published:2021-04-29
  • Contact: Yindong SHEN E-mail:yindong@hust.edu.cn;2537531989@qq.com;jli@cs.stir.ac.uk
  • About author:|SHEN Yindong was born in 1965. She received her Ph.D. degree from the School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK in 2001. She is a professor in the School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests include operation and optimization, vehicle routing optimization, public transport vehicle scheduling, and crew scheduling.E-mail: yindong@hust.edu.cn||PENG Liwen was born in 1994. He is currently working toward his M.S. degree in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. His research interests are intelligent computing, multi-compartment vehicle routing optimization and electric vehicle routing optimization.E-mail: 2537531989@qq.com||LI Jingpeng was born in 1969. He received his Ph.D. degree from University of Leeds, UK in 2002. He is a reader at the Division of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, UK. His research focuses on computational search methodologies and models emerging from the complexity and uncertainty of real-world optimization problems and decision support systems.E-mail: jli@cs.stir.ac.uk
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71571076) and the National Key R&D Program for the 13th-Five-Year-Plan of China (2018YFF0300301);This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71571076) and the National Key R&D Program for the 13th-Five-Year-Plan of China (2018YFF0300301)

Abstract:

The multi-compartment electric vehicle routing problem (EVRP) with soft time window and multiple charging types (MCEVRP-STW&MCT) is studied, in which electric multi-compartment vehicles that are environmentally friendly but need to be recharged in course of transport process, are employed. A mathematical model for this optimization problem is established with the objective of minimizing the function composed of vehicle cost, distribution cost, time window penalty cost and charging service cost. To solve the problem, an estimation of the distribution algorithm based on Lévy flight (EDA-LF) is proposed to perform a local search at each iteration to prevent the algorithm from falling into local optimum. Experimental results demonstrate that the EDA-LF algorithm can find better solutions and has stronger robustness than the basic EDA algorithm. In addition, when comparing with existing algorithms, the result shows that the EDA-LF can often get better solutions in a relatively short time when solving medium and large-scale instances. Further experiments show that using electric multi-compartment vehicles to deliver incompatible products can produce better results than using traditional fuel vehicles.

Key words: multi-compartment vehicle routing problem, electric vehicle routing problem (EVRP), soft time window, multiple charging type, estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA), Lévy flight