University of Belgrade

Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering

1. General

Generating vehicle routes manually is a time-consuming process. At the same time, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery and collection of goods is influenced significantly by the routing and scheduling of the vehicles. The best option for transport companies is to generate vehicle routes automatically, using appropriate optimization algorithm. By using vehicle routing software on a daily basis you can decrease your transportation costs.

The BCO Route Planner uses Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) algorithm. The algorithm involves a Swarm Intelligence (SI) optimization concept. Swarm intelligence is the branch of artificial intelligence based on study of behavior of individuals in various decentralized systems. The BCO Route Planner is inspired by the foraging habits of bees in the nature. Similar to bees that can discover the best food source, the BCO Route Planner can create the best set of vehicle routes.

The BCO Route Planner develops the best routes for the vehicles so that the total vehicle operating costs are minimized. The algorithm also takes into account defined set of constraints for each route.