A DNA-based algorithm for capacitated vehicle routing problem using temperature gradient technique

The biological Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid (DNA) strand is found to be a promising computing unit. An attempt has been made in this paper to solve Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). This difficult combinatorial problem combines both the Bin Packing Problem (BPP) and the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem (MTSP). In this paper, the thermodynamic properties of DNA have been utilised for the first time, along with other bio-chemical operations to obtain the optimal solution. Thermodynamics properties of DNA strand helps to use actual numerical values for distance. Moreover, the proposed approach can be adopted to solve more real-life applications like scheduling problems, with necessary modifications. In this work, a case study of a CVRP having seven customers and three vehicles with the same capacity has been solved to validate the proposed approach. This method exhibits the ability to solve complex combinatorial problems using molecular computing.