A Virtual-Force Based Swarm Algorithm for Balanced Circular Bin Packing Problems
This addresses a specific optimization problem in computational geometry, likely incremental as it builds on existing swarm methods for packing.
The paper tackles the NP-hard balanced circular bin packing problem by developing a virtual-force based swarm algorithm to minimize container radius while satisfying equilibrium constraints, reporting results on benchmarks with up to 300 circles.
Balanced circular bin packing problems consist in positioning a given number of weighted circles in order to minimize the radius of a circular container while satisfying equilibrium constraints. These problems are NP-hard, highly constrained and dimensional. This paper describes a swarm algorithm based on a virtual-force system in order to solve balanced circular bin packing problems. In the proposed approach, a system of forces is applied to each component allowing to take into account the constraints and minimizing the objective function using the fundamental principle of dynamics. The proposed algorithm is experimented and validated on benchmarks of various balanced circular bin packing problems with up to 300 circles. The reported results allow to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to existing results from the literature.