Method and system for timetabling using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agents
First Claim
1. A timetabling system based on an improved ant colony optimization using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agent, wherein the timetabling system can provide an optimal timetable solution for a timetable problem that consists of a plurality of activities, each activity being scheduled to a start time within a planning period and being allocated all required resources from a plurality of sets of resources, said timetabling system comprising:
- an electronic device having a memory capacity that contains a storage medium, wherein the storage medium stores the information of the timetable problem including the plurality of activities, the time slots within the planning period, and the plurality of sets of resources; and
a timetabling module being implemented in the electronic device;
wherein the timetabling module comprises a source graph constructor for constructing the source graph for the timetable problem;
wherein the source graph consists of a plurality of activity nodes representing the activities, a plurality of resource nodes representing the resources, and a plurality of time nodes that are associated with the plurality of resource nodes, thereby the plurality of resource nodes and the time nodes form a multi-resource-time-space, i.e., the source graph; and
wherein the timetabling module comprises a timetable solution searching engine performing timetable solution searching cycles on the source graph to thereby determine an optimal timetable solution.
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Abstract
The present invention provides a timetabling system based on an improved ant colony optimization using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agents. The timetabling system can provide an optimal timetable solution for a timetable problem that consists of a plurality of activities, each activity being scheduled to a start time within a planning period and being allocated all required resources from a plurality of sets of resources. In one aspect of the present invention, the timetabling system comprises an electronic device having a memory capacity that contains a storage medium, and a timetabling module being implemented in the electronic device. The present invention also provides a timetabling method based on an improved ant colony optimization by using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agents to obtain an optimal timetable solution for a timetable problem that consists of a plurality of activities, each activity being scheduled into a start time within a planning period and being allocated all required resources from a plurality of sets of resources.
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Citations
30 Claims
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1. A timetabling system based on an improved ant colony optimization using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agent, wherein the timetabling system can provide an optimal timetable solution for a timetable problem that consists of a plurality of activities, each activity being scheduled to a start time within a planning period and being allocated all required resources from a plurality of sets of resources, said timetabling system comprising:
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an electronic device having a memory capacity that contains a storage medium, wherein the storage medium stores the information of the timetable problem including the plurality of activities, the time slots within the planning period, and the plurality of sets of resources; and
a timetabling module being implemented in the electronic device;
wherein the timetabling module comprises a source graph constructor for constructing the source graph for the timetable problem;
wherein the source graph consists of a plurality of activity nodes representing the activities, a plurality of resource nodes representing the resources, and a plurality of time nodes that are associated with the plurality of resource nodes, thereby the plurality of resource nodes and the time nodes form a multi-resource-time-space, i.e., the source graph; and
wherein the timetabling module comprises a timetable solution searching engine performing timetable solution searching cycles on the source graph to thereby determine an optimal timetable solution. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A timetabling method based on an improved ant colony optimisation by using pheromone and hybrid heuristics based cooperating agents to obtain an optimal timetable solution for a timetable problem that consists of a plurality of activities, each activity being scheduled into a time slot within a planning period and being allocated all required resources from a plurality of sets of resources, said timetabling method comprising:
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constructing a source graph having a plurality of activity nodes representing the activities, a plurality of resource nodes representing the resources, and a plurality of time nodes that are associated with the plurality of resource nodes, thereby the plurality of resource nodes and the time nodes form a multi-resource-time-space, i.e., the source graph;
initializing one or more searching parameters for one or more searching agents; and
performing timetable solution searching cycles on said source graph for each of said one or more searching agents to determine the optimal timetable solution. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
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Specification