Delegate MAS for Large Scale and Dynamic PDP: A Case Study

Pickup and Delivery Problems (PDPs) have received significant research interest in the past decades. Their industrial relevance has stimulated the study of various types of solutions. Both centralized solutions, using discrete optimization techniques, as well as distributed, multi-agent system (MAS) solutions, have proven their merits. However, real PDP problems today are more and more characterized by (1) dynamism in terms of tasks, service time, vehicle availability, infrastructure availability, and (2) their large scale in terms of the geographical field of operation, the number of pickup and delivery tasks and vehicles. A combination of both characteristics brings unsolved challenges. Delegate MAS is a coordination mechanism that could prove to be valuable for constructing a decentralized solution for dynamic and large scale PDP problems. In this paper, we illustrate a solution based on delegate MAS for solving PDP. Our solution enables different agents to dynamically collect and disseminate local information and make decisions in a fully decentralized way. We applied our approach to a concrete case study. Experimental results indicate the suitability of the approach for dynamic and large scale PDP problems.