Constraint Programming Approach for Spatial Packaging Problem

The Spatial Packaging Problem (SPP) aims to solve a mixture of the 3D Packing Problem (3DPP) and the 3D Pipe-Routing Problem. The main feature that distinguishes the SPP from the traditional 3DPP is the interconnections that exist between its components. The SPP is more challenging because the shape and dimensions of the interconnections are unknown, and must be determined as part of the solution. In this paper, we propose a relaxation, a constraint programming model and a search heuristic to solve the SPP. We relax the SPP by using taxicab geometry and model it as a constraint satisfaction problem, then solve it by using a search heuristic based on interconnection volumes. The proposed approach has been evaluated on a challenging benchmark that reflects a range of aerospace and commercial applications varying in number of components and interconnections. The preliminary results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.