A Domain-Specific Language For Routing Problems

Hoffmann, Benjamin; Guckert, Michael; Farrenkopf, Thomas; Chalmers, Kevin; Urquhart, Neil

doi:10.7148/2018-0262

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The depot uses a genetic algorithm (Hoffmann, Chalmers, et al 2019) that internally builds a complete graph of all customer nodes (Hoffmann, Guckert, et al 2018) and optimises the function given in (1). Here, K denotes the set of vehicles at the depot, N the set of nodes of the complete graph (including the depot), t ij the travel time from node i to node j and x k ij a decision variable that is set to 1 if vehicle k travels from node i to node j and 0 otherwise.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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ECMS 2019 Proceedings edited by Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Marco Gribaudo, Massimo Ficco

2019

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The 33rd edition of the ECMS conference, a widely consolidated interdisciplinary forum for simulation and modeling researchers and practitioners that keeps its reference position year after year, brings with it two novelties: a new name and a new form of publication. In fact, to better catch in the name the actual situation of participants, the European Council for Modelling and Simulation decided to rename the event as "ECMS International Conference on Modelling and Simulation". This year, we also start a new book series of annual volumes, namely "Communications of the ECMS", which replaces the name "Proceedings" in order to acknowledge the recognition and reputation of the scientific community of simulation. This year the chosen conference venue is in Caserta, Italy. The Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", previously known as Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli, a state-owned university founded in 1990 with the explicit mission of meeting the cultural demand of the population living in the northern part of Campania. Caserta, famous for its wonderful royal palace, whose facilities will host the conference, is a city with a long history, already inhabited in the 5th century BC. It flourished in the middle age and then in the XVI-XVII century AD, surrounded by a geographical area rich of historical relevance that was under Roman influence.The university is characterized by its diffusion over the territory of the province of Caserta, having its 16 departments located in Caserta, Aversa and Santa Maria Capua Vetere, and Napoli, in which its roots can be found: the most of the departments are located in historical landmarks, that have been saved and recovered by specific agreements and funding. More than 25000 students from Italy and abroad study at Vanvitelli University enrolled in bachelor, master and PhD. curricula, taught as well in Italian as in English, and covering different aspects of mathematics, physics, data analytics, engineering, law, economics, political sciences, medicine, nursery, biotechnology, pharmacy, environmental sciences, cultural heritage, literature, psychology, tourism, design and architecture.We are honored to offer, besides the scientific program of the conference, consisting in more than 65 high quality accepted papers, a rich and various series of social events, as usual for the spirit of this conference.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

ECMS 2019 Proceedings edited by Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Marco Gribaudo, Massimo Ficco

2019

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“…We have demonstrated how Athos can be used to model dynamic vehicle routing problems and how solutions can be computed. Besides the evolutionary algorithm presented here Athos provides other heuristics for solving a variety of complex routing problems (see Hoffmann, Guckert, et al 2018 andHoffmann, Chalmers, et al 2019). At the moment we extend the Athos environment with a flexible interface to Open Street Map 2 so that the definition of the underlying network can be generated from OSM data rather than be coded manually.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Athos deliberately does not support imperative programming as we aim to provide a purely declarative modelling language. Currently available meta-heuristics libraries in Athos are an implementation of an ACS (Ant Colony System) for solving TSP-like problems Hoffmann, Guckert, et al 2018 and an Evolutionary Algorithm for solving more complex vehicle routing problems like the problem presented in this paper.. The VRPTW describes the task of visiting a set of customers for delivery or pick-up of products, depending on context.…”

Section: Athosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems With Athos

Hoffmann¹,

Guckert²,

Chalmers³

et al. 2019

ECMS 2019 Proceedings Edited by Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Marco Gribaudo, Massimo Ficco

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Complex routing problems, such as vehicle routing problems with additional constraints, are both hard to solve and hard to express in a form that is accessible to the human expert and at the same time processible by a computer system that is supposed to produce a solution of sufficient quality. The formulation must be formal enough to avoid ambiguities and also comprehensible enough to be created, discussed and shared by domain experts. In this paper, we present the domain specific language Athos in which complex routing problems can be expressed in a computationally independent, human-readable form. Athos is then transformed into code that can be run in an adequate target platform. Suitable methods for solving problems are available and applied to the given problem. We present a case study in which we use a genetic algorithm to solve instances of a vehicle routing problem with time windows and demonstrate the end to end process to produce a solution in the Athos environment. Moreover, we show how the Athos system goes beyond optimisation of static routes and can be used as a tool to simulate the impact of traffic and congestion on the tours. We call this extended problem a dynamic vehicle routing problem with time windows.

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“…While in complete graphs these matrices just store the respective values of the edge connecting two customers or a customer and a depot, in non-complete graph the shortest distance as well as the shortest time between those nodes first has to be computed using Dijkstra's algorithm (cf. [8]).…”

Section: Athos Graphextension Packagementioning

confidence: 99%

Athos - A Model Driven Approach to Describe and Solve Optimisation Problems

Hoffmann

Chalmers

Urquhart

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the 4th ACM International Workshop on Real World Domain Specific Languages

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Implementing solutions for optimisation problems with general purpose high-level programming languages is a time consuming task that can only be carried out by professional software developers who typically are not domain experts. We address this problem by developing the Domain Specific Language Athos that allows declarative specification of Vehicle Routing Problems with Time Windows (VRPTW). The model is input to a generator that creates programs to solve the VRPTW in a multi-agent environment (NetLogo) which is further extended with a Genetic Algorithm optimiser. We discuss the overall Athos architecture and compare the models with the generated code to demonstrate the benefit for developers by discussing general language related considerations. A case study with a published benchmark gives proof for the practical feasibility of our approach. Beyond the quality criteria discussed in this paper future work will include extensive field experiments with domain experts applying the language to harden the language and improve usability.

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A Domain-Specific Language For Routing Problems

Cited by 4 publications

References 14 publications

ECMS 2019 Proceedings edited by Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Marco Gribaudo, Massimo Ficco

ECMS 2019 Proceedings edited by Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Marco Gribaudo, Massimo Ficco

Simulating Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems With Athos

Athos - A Model Driven Approach to Describe and Solve Optimisation Problems

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