Title: A comparison of different lower bounding procedures for the routing of automated guided vehicles in an urban context

Authors: Ezzeddine Fatnassi; Jouhaina Chaouachi

Addresses: Institut Supérieur de Gestion, University of Tunis, 41 Rue de la liberté, Le Bardo 2000, Tunisia ' Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, IHEC Carthage Présidence-2016 Carthage, Tunisia

Abstract: We propose different lower bounding procedures to solve the problem of routing a set of automated guided vehicles in an urban context. This problem consists of designing a set of low-cost roads starting and ending at a depot while satisfying a set of transportation demands in an urban area. The problem is treated under a set of different constraints, such as battery constraints and time window constraints. Our lower bounding approach consists of a decomposition method in which we first solve a relaxed problem. We then deal with the set of infeasible routes obtained from the relaxed problem. The different procedures developed in this paper allow us to find a set of good-quality lower bounds.

Keywords: automated guided vehicles; AGVs; lower bounds; vehicle routing problem; VRP; urban environment; cities; battery constraints; time window constraints; electric vehicles; self-driving vehicles; autonomous vehicles.

DOI: 10.1504/IJANS.2015.076531

International Journal of Applied Nonlinear Science, 2015 Vol.2 No.1/2, pp.120 - 135

Received: 05 Jan 2015
Accepted: 03 Nov 2015
Published online: 11 May 2016 *

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