A Novel Quasi-human Heuristic Algorithm for Two-dimensional Rectangle Packing Problem

Two-dimensional rectangle packing problem is the problem of packing a series of rectangles into a larger container with maximum area usage of the container. This problem involves many industrial applications, such as shipping, timber cutting, very large scale integration (VLSI) design, etc. It belongs to a subset of classical packing problems and has been shown to be NP hard. For solving this problem, many algorithms such as genetic algorithm, simulated annealing and other heuristic algorithms are presented. In this paper, a novel quasi-human heuristic algorithm is proposed according to the experience and wisdom of human being. 21 rectangle-packing test instances are tested by the produced algorithm, 16 instances of them having achieved optimum solutions within reasonable runtime. The experiment results demonstrate that the produced algorithm is rather efficient for solving two-dimensional rectangle packing problem.