A Review of Distributed Multi-Agent Systems Approach to Solve University Course Timetabling Problem

Scheduling is one the problems on which so many researches have been done over years and university course timetabling problem which is a NP-hard problem is a type of scheduling problem. On the other hand, timetabling process must be done for each semester frequently which is an exhausting and time consuming task. University course timetabling problem performs the allocation of whole events to timeslots and rooms by considering the list of hard and soft constraints presented in one semester, so that no conflict is created in such allocations. In this problem, the hard constraints should not be violation under any condition, but soft constraints should not be violation as much as possible. The aim of this paper is to analyze a new approach to solve university course timetabling problem called an approach based on multi agent systems (Cooperative Search) in addition to briefly study approaches based on operational researches, metaheuristic methods and intelligent novel methods.