A Revised EM-like Mechanism for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problems

This study considers the application of a new meta- heuristic algorithm, the electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM), to solve the vehicle routing problem (VRP). The VRP belongs to the combinatorial optimization problem. However, the problem is NP-hard problem, it is very difficult to solve. If we want to solve the VRAM by traditional methods, we will either consume a lot of time and may not be cost-effective or unable to find the optimum. The EM algorithm which developed by Birbil and Fang is a meta-heuristic algorithm with an attraction-repulsion mechanism making solutions move toward the optimum. In the paper of Birbil et al., they have shown that the EM mechanism can avoid the sample points from trapping into the local optimum and moving toward the global optimum. In some literature, the EM algorithm is designed for solving real-valued problems. However, we draw the VRP as a sorting problem. Therefore, we try to modify the EM algorithm to suit the VRP.