Genetic algorithm with path relinking for the multi-vehicle selective pickup and delivery problem

The multi-vehicle selective pickup and delivery problem (MVSPDP) is a class of vehicle routing problem. The MVSPDP aims to minimize the total distance traveled by a fleet of vehicles to collect and supply commodities, subject to vehicle capacity and travel distance. This problem relaxes the constraint that the vehicles have to visit all customers. In the MVSPDP, vehicles only need to collect sufficient commodities from some selected pickup nodes for all delivery nodes. To resolve the problem, this study develops a genetic algorithm with path relinking (GAPR). A repair operator is presented for the GAPR to handle the constraints. Experimental results on fourteen benchmarks validate the effectiveness of the proposed GAPR for the MVSPDP.