Title: A new mathematical model for non-fixed destination multi-depot multiple travelling salesmen with time window problem

Authors: Mohammad Taher Shirafkan; Hany Seidgar; Nikbakhsh Javadian

Addresses: Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Tabarsi Street, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Tabarsi Street, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Tabarsi Street, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran

Abstract: Consider the problem of having a team of cooperative and autonomous vehicles to repeatedly visit a set of target locations and return back to their initial locations. This problem is known as multi-depot multiple travelling salesman problems (MD-MTSP), which applies to several mobile robots applications. The non-fixed destination multi-depot multiple travelling salesmen with time window problem (MmTSPTW) is a generalisation of a well-known MmTSP with considering time window for each node in a tour. The salesmen also are not forced to return to their starting depot. This problem is of great complexity and belongs to NP-complete class of problems. In this paper, a new mathematical model is proposed for MmTSPTW by considering waiting penalties and time window is defined for each depot (city). The salesmen only can service the customers within these time windows and also some penalties are considered for any deviation of start time. The objective function of problem is to minimise the total costs and penalties of the tours.

Keywords: multi-depot multiple travelling salesmen problem; MmTSP; time windows.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2018.096167

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2018 Vol.31 No.4, pp.530 - 538

Received: 28 Jun 2016
Accepted: 16 Dec 2016

Published online: 15 Nov 2018 *

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