Today was a bit....trying. We spent pretty much the entire day as a group discussing and trying to figure out how to move forward with the optimization problem, which in the end we decided to change into a greedy search problem instead. After spending a large amount of time trying to get everyone on the same page with the dynamic programming concept for optimization and defining state variables in that way, we eventually just decided to nix the whole dynamic programming concept and go for an all in one checking step that would greedily insert unscheduled requests into the schedule for the day, and do it in an order that was based on the lowest cost for insertion at each step. There are three main constraints that will determine if inserting an unscheduled request is feasible: checking capacity, checking for inserting the pick up, and checking for inserting the drop off. Each of these entails quite a bit so at the end of the day we started trying to create some pseudo code for what each will need to do and what functions might need to be created for each. For example, checking capacity does not only mean that the bus can afford to put the unscheduled ride's client and their party on the bus at pick up, but the bus should also never go over capacity late, which may be the case when they pick up more people before dropping off the unscheduled request's party. Checking feasibility for inserting a pick up is also pretty involved, if not more so because you have to check which runs it can be inserting into, then check if it's feasible for any of those, then insert it and pass on what the schedule would look like after the insertion. Inserting a drop off is similarly involved. After an insertion method is considered feasible, the cost of inserting it will also need to be calculated so it can be compared to other feasible insertions. Beyond all this, we also realized that we needed to clarify some of the variables in the 18 month data, and see if we could get them to be added into the 15 minute data that we're continuously receiving. All in all, it was a lot and the day was long, but I think we're more on the same page now.
|
aboutThroughout my research I kept a daily blog that details what I did and my experiences. On this page you are invited to check out my different entries. |