Multimodal transportation routing optimization based on multi-objective Q-learning under time uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract Multimodal transportation is a modern way of cargo transportation. With the increasing demand for cargo transportation, higher requirements are being placed on multimodal transportation multi-objective routing optimization. In multimodal transportation multi-objective routing optimization, in response to the limitations of classical algorithms in solving large-scale problems with multiple nodes and modes of transport, the limitations of directed transportation networks in the application, and the uncertainty of transport time, this paper proposes an optimization framework based on multi-objective weighted sum Q-learning, combined with the proposed undirected multiple-node network, and characterizes the uncertainty of time with a positively skewed distribution. The undirected multiple-node transportation network can better simulate cargo transportation and characterize transfer information, facilitate the modification of origin and destination, and avoid suboptimal solutions due to the manual setting of wrong route directions. The network is combined with weighted sum Q-learning to solve multimodal transportation multi-objective routing optimization problems faster and better. When modeling the uncertainty of transport time, a positively skewed distribution is used. The three objectives of transport cost, carbon emission cost, and transport time were studied and compared with PSO, GA, AFO, NSGA-II, and MOPSO. The experimental results show that compared with PSO, GA, and AFO using a directed transportation network, the proposed method has a significant improvement in optimization results and running time, and the running time is shortened by 26 times. The proposed method can better solve the boundary of the Pareto front and dominate the partial solutions of NSGA-II and MOPSO. The effect of time uncertainty on the performance of the algorithm is more significant in transport orders with high time weight. With the increase in uncertainty, the reliability of the route decreases. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.

Keywords

• Multimodal transportation
• Multi-objective Q-learning
• Weighted sum
• Undirected multiple-node transportation network
• Time uncertainty