An artificial bee colony approach for the undirected capacitated arc routing problem with profits

Abstract

This paper considers a recently introduced routing problem variant called the undirected capacitated arc routing problem with profits (UCARPP), which belongs to a well-known class of vehicle routing problems. Although many studies have developed algorithms for vehicle routing problems, few studies have addressed the UCARPP. This paper proposes a relatively new technique, the artificial bee colony (ABC) approach, to solve the UCARPP. Moreover, considering the comparatively few studies on discrete optimisation using an ABC algorithm, this study also presents a new usage for the ABC algorithm in a difficult discrete optimisation problem, which is effective, efficient, robust and comparable toother approaches. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.