Enhancing orienteering problem solutions using ant colony optimization with vegetation density considerations

Abstract

Rogaining is a long-distance orienteering sport, in which teams must visit checkpoints that are distributed in a given geographical area. Each checkpoint has a given score, and the aim is to obtain the maximum score in the minimum possible time. We propose to define this optimization problem as an orienteering problem which is a variant of the travelling salesman problem. We propose ant colony optimization to solve this problem, to find the best possible routes a team could take, aiming to maximize a score to time ratio within a given time window, while time considers the impact that the vegetation density has on the speed when going from one checkpoint to another. The solution of this optimization problem aims to take a step further in allowing teams and coaches increase their sport performance by comparing the elected routes in terrain against the optimal solution.