An Ant Colony algorithm hybridized with insertion heuristics for the Time Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

This paper presents an Ant Colony System algorithm hybridized with insertion heuristics for the Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (TDVRPTW). In the TDVRPTW a fleet of vehicles must deliver goods to a set of customers, time window constraints of the customers must be respected and the fact that the travel time between two points depends on the time of departure has to be taken into account. The latter assumption is particularly important in an urban context where the traffic plays a significant role.