14 DAY TRIAL // Fitting the largest amount of objects into the smallest place possible, without overlapping, is the single main strive of all shipping and packaging companies worldwide. Less wasted space means less deliveries to a single area, as well as greater efficiency in transportation. This translates into lower costs, saved fuel, and a smaller impact on the environment. Now, a researcher managed to create an algorithm that has the potential to save shipping companies large sums of money, by simply arranging their parcels in the most efficient way possible.
Over the years, the shipping systems worldwide have constantly increased the amounts of goods and parcels they carry from one place to another, and a huge infrastructure had to be set up, in order to handle the massive workload.
Aware of this problem, University of Mainz researcher Johannes Schneider and his team managed to develop a mathematical 2D algorithm that does something apparently very simple – stuff for example 20 circles in a single one, with a diameter as small as possible. The kicker is that all the 20 circles have different sizes. So the algorithm has to decide which layout is best, in terms of space efficiency, and to re-arrange the circles accordingly.
The new program matched all existing records, of cramming up to 23 different-sized discs in the smallest circle possible, and broke every single one of those involving between 26 and 50 discs. Schneider says that the application can also be translated into a 3D environment, where it could greatly benefit cargo carriers. UPS, for example, needs every inch of space on their cargo airplanes, in order to avoid making the same trip more times than necessary.
The main feat of this algorithm, the thing that separates it from all other such programs in existence, is the fact that it can also take backwards steps in its reasoning. For instance, if at some point it realizes that it's going about maximizing space efficiency the wrong way, it can take a step back, and reassess its options.
Also, it has the ability of letting seemingly-wrong disc layouts exist, if the end result proves more efficient than all other that were obtained before. This feat is inexistent in regular algorithms, which simply shuffle the discs next to each other, in order to minimize the total area of the disc encompassing them.