Solving vehicle routing problem for multistorey buildings using iterated local search

Abstract

Vehicle routing problem (VRP) which is a well-known combinatorial optimisation problem that has many applications used in industry is also a generalised form of the travelling salesman problem. In this study, we defined and formulated the VRP in multistorey buildings (Multistorey VRP) for the first time and proposed a solving method employing iterated local search metaheuristic algorithm. This variant of VRP has a great potential for turning the direction of optimisation research and applications to the vertical cities area as well as the horizontal ones. Routes of part picking or placing vehicles/humans in multistorey plants can be minimised by this way. VRP can also be applied to the optimisation of delivering the packages (goods, meals, folders, mails, etc.) to rooms or locations of the structures such as buildings, and skyscrapers for travelling robots/humans using elevators and stairs. The first detailed multistorey building optimisation experiments were conducted by designing a series of scenarios with different parameter values (number of storeys, connections between storeys and customers). The results were presented and the effects of the various building structures over the performance were discussed.