Sequence Variables for Routing Problems

Authors Augustin Delecluse , Pierre Schaus , Pascal Van Hentenryck



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Author Details

Augustin Delecluse
  • TRAIL, ICTEAM, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pierre Schaus
  • ICTEAM, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pascal Van Hentenryck
  • Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

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Augustin Delecluse, Pierre Schaus, and Pascal Van Hentenryck. Sequence Variables for Routing Problems. In 28th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 235, pp. 19:1-19:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2022.19

Abstract

Constraint Programming (CP) is one of the most flexible approaches for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems (VRP). This paper proposes the sequence variable domain, that is inspired by the insertion graph introduced in [Bent and Van Hentenryck, 2004] and the subset bound domain for set variables. This domain representation, which targets VRP applications, allows for an efficient insertion-based search on a partial tour and the implementation of simple, yet efficient filtering algorithms for constraints that enforce time-windows on the visits and capacities on the vehicles. Experiment results demonstrate the efficiency and flexibility of this CP domain for solving some hard VRP problems, including the Dial-A-Ride, the Patient Transportation, and the asymmetric TSP with time windows.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Constraint and logic programming
Keywords
  • Constraint Programming
  • Dial-A-Ride
  • Patient Transportation
  • TSPTW
  • Vehicle Routing
  • Sequence Variables
  • Insertion Variables

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