Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Cooperative Approach to Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem.

Cooperation as a problem-solving strategy is widely used to build methods addressing complex hard optimization problems. It involves a set of highly autonomous agents, each implementing a particular solution method. Agents cooperate during the process of solving the problem. The main goal of the paper is to evaluate to what extent a mode of cooperation (synchronous or asynchronous) between a number of optimization agents cooperating through sharing a central memory influences the quality of solutions while solving instances of the Vehicle Routing Problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]