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Packing Algorithms May Save the Planet

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-might-be-an-overstatement dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on how competitions to devise better packing algorithms could help cut the environmental impact of deliveries and shipping. A new record setter at packing differently-sized discs into the smallest space without overlapping them has potential to be applied to real world 3D problems, researchers claim." Ok the title might be a little ridiculous, but the ridiculous packaging used to ship a few tiny objects by some shippers is pretty shameful.

3 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Are algorithms the issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find the development of new algorithms interesting in itself, and I suspect that superior packing algorithms will have a number of interesting applications; but I wonder if they'll actually have much effect on shippers in the nearish term.

    A great deal of heterogenous object packing is done by humans, since the scale required to make packing assorted objects by machine is quite large(even places with automated warehouses often have a human do the packing at the end; because humans are really quite versatile object manipulators), and humans are actually pretty good at object packing. Not perfect; but quite good.

    I'd suspect that inefficient packing has less to do with packing being hard, and more to do with the desire to standardize on a limited number of box sizes, to ease inventory management, which is a quite different problem.

    1. Re:Are algorithms the issue? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its not "practically impossible" to find the best solution. It is quite possible. The issue is that finding the optimal solution takes O(2^n), where n is the number of objects to be packed. So, for any large value of n, the calculation will take a prohibitively long time, but it will terminate.

      So they're not practical to solve--in other words, practically impossible.

      This is in contrast to undecidable problems, which really are "practically impossible" to solve.

      That would be a case of *literally* impossible to solve. Which means that they're practically impossible as well, of course.

  2. Re:Packing algorithms don't just apply to shipping by swahebrumaf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Something the summariser seems to have missed.. This kind of problem comes up in a lot of different places.

    Another thing that is forgotten... When a process can be optimized, it normally results in price-cuts which result in heavier use of the process. In the end more resources are used than before the optimization, opposite to the original intent.