Scheduling and routing of vehicles for large scale transportation systems has become an increasingly significant problem area because of increased costs for fuel, vehicle acquisition, maintenance, anci labor. The need for efficient vehicle scheduling and routing exists throughout all sectors of industry, institutions, and government. As a result, extensive research has been performed related to the development of automated algorithms for vehicle routing. However, current algorithms rely on computationally intensive integer programming techniques and do not address all of the difficult constraints characteristic of real-world transportation systems. The proposed research involves the investigation of innovative vehicle scheduling and routing methods developed by the Principal Investigator for sealift transportation analysis based on iterative apptication of highly efficient network flow algorithms. These methods have the potential to increase speed by a factor of ten while incorporating many of the additional real-world constraints necessary for practical commercial development. The new methods have been successfully tested for special purpose applications but require additional research to resolve technical difficulties and extend results to provide the basis for a practical, real-time vehicle routing and scheduling system.The potential commercial application as described by the awardee: The development of highly efficient, automated vehicle scheduling and routing methods can provide substantial benefits for a variety of applications including product distribution, pickup and delivery services, warehouse deliveries to stores, supply and transportation logistics, and ship scheduling. The large costs associated with transportation systems imply that even a 10% improvement in the efficient utilization of vehicles can provide significant savings for many commercial applications nationwide. Noetics is an applied R&D firm specializing in large scale mathematical optimization and computer algorithms.
