초록
This research is to develop a possible process to apply k-means clustering to an efficient vehicle routing process under time varying vehicle moving speeds. Time varying vehicle moving speeds are easy to find in metropolitan area. There is a big difference between the moving time requirements of two specific delivery points. Less delivery times are necessary if a delivery vehicle moves after or before rush hours. Various vehicle moving speeds make the efficient vehicle route search process extremely difficult to find even for near optimum routes due to the changes of required time between delivery points. Delivery area division is designed to simplify this complicated VRPs due to time various vehicle speeds. Certain divided area can be grouped into few adjacent divisions to assume that no vehicle speed change in each division. The vehicle speeds moving between two delivery points within this adjacent division can be assumed to be same. This indicates that it is possible to search optimum routes based upon the distance between two points as regular traveling salesman problems. This makes the complicated search process simple to attack since few local optimum routes can be found and then connects them to make a complete route. A possible method to divide area using k-means clustering is suggested and detailed examples are given with explanations in this paper. It is clear that the results obtained using the suggested process are more reasonable than other methods. The suggested area division process can be used to generate better area division promising improved vehicle route generations.