Optimized Route Planning for Delivery Trucks Inspired by Honeybees

Innovation: Industry

Routific

2012

Image: Shelby Cohron / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Cooperate Within the Same Species

A species is a group of organisms capable of breeding to produce fertile offspring. When individuals within a species undertake activities that benefit one another, that cooperation benefits not just the individuals, but also local and wider populations of that species. Collaborating in activities such as finding food, controlling parasites, and protecting from predators enhances overall survival. To cooperate, there must be enough benefit to an individual, and especially to a population, to justify any risk taken by individuals. Through cooperation, risk is distributed among individuals and the benefits to the community are greater than the sum of the benefits to individuals. An example is birds that gather in flocks, a cooperative activity more beneficial than acting alone. While some birds forage, others watch for predators. When one finds food, others also feed on it. Despite potential short-term competition for an individual that finds food, over the long-term, that same individual benefits when others find different food sources.

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Cooperate/Compete Between Different Species

From parasitism to mutualisms, there are endless interactions between organisms in nature. Interactions between species that lead to a negative outcome for one species are known as competition. Cooperation occurs when organisms work together for the benefit of each organism or species. While competition often occurs over resources or mates, the more biologists have begun to look for examples of cooperation in nature, the more they have found. For example, around 90% of plants have a beneficial partnership with fungi. Fungi provide the plant with nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in exchange for sugars from the plant.

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Brochures

Routific Flyer
282.6 KB PDF

Route optimization software from Routific uses an algorithm that helps delivery trucks calculate more efficient routes.

Benefits

Saves time
Increased efficiency & productivity
Decreased costs

Applications

Route planning

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities
Goal 12: Responsible Production & Consumption

The Challenge

Poorly planned delivery routes decrease efficiency and productivity and also increase fuel consumption, leading to increased carbon emissions.

Innovation Details

Routific optimizes route planning for vehicle delivery fleets. It is based on the “Bees Algorithm”, a search algorithm that mimics the food-foraging behavior of honey bees to find the most efficient route between several different stops.

Example of route optimization.

Biological Model

A colony of honey bees must forage over long distances in multiple directions to harvest nectar and pollen from different flower patches. Scout bees must evaluate the quality of the food sources and then relay this information back to the rest of the hive. They do this by doing a ‘waggle dance’ , where a bee shakes or vibrates and walks in a circle or ‘figure 8’ pattern that tells the other bees where the new site is. The faster a bee vibrates, the more promising it thinks the site is. Based upon the relative vigor of each bee’s dance, other scouts will asses the site. If they also think it’s promising, they will also do a waggle dance. This democratic process allows bees to quickly and easily find the best sites to forage for food.

See Related Strategy

thousands of honeybees swarm on a tree branch, closely together building a half spherical shape

Biological Strategy

Quorum Determines New Hive Site

Bees

Honeybees in a colony select a new hive location via quorum.

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