Related papers: A variant of multitask n-vehicle exploration probl…
The ARRIVAL problem is to decide the fate of a train moving along the edges of a directed graph, according to a simple (deterministic) pseudorandom walk. The problem is in $NP \cap coNP$ but not known to be in $P$. The currently best…
We formalize the problem of selecting the optimal set of options for planning as that of computing the smallest set of options so that planning converges in less than a given maximum of value-iteration passes. We first show that the problem…
We consider the product knapsack problem, which is the variant of the classical 0-1 knapsack problem where the objective consists of maximizing the product of the profits of the selected items. These profits are allowed to be positive or…
We consider an orienteering problem (OP) where an agent needs to visit a series (possibly a subset) of depots, from which the maximal accumulated profits are desired within given limited time budget. Different from most existing works where…
The paper considers scheduling on parallel machines under the constraint that some pairs of jobs cannot be processed concurrently. Each job has an associated weight, and all jobs have the same deadline. The objective is to maximise the…
This paper considers the maximization of the expected maximum value of a portfolio of random variables subject to a budget constraint. We refer to this as the optimal college application problem. When each variable's cost, or each college's…
This paper introduces a new routing problem referred to as the vehicle routing problem with vector profits. Given a network composed of nodes (depot/sites) and arcs connecting the nodes, the problem determines routes that depart from the…
We consider a monopolist seller facing a single buyer with additive valuations over n heterogeneous, independent items. It is known that in this important setting optimal mechanisms may require randomization [HR12], use menus of infinite…
Finding a feasible and prompt solution to the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a prerequisite for efficient freight transportation, seamless logistics, and sustainable mobility. Traditional optimization methods reach their limits when…
Consider a transportation problem with sets of sources and sinks. There are profits and prices on the edges. The goal is to maximize the profit while meeting the following constraints; the total flow going out of a source must not exceed…
We study the problem of scheduling jobs on parallel machines minimizing the total completion time, with each job using exactly one resource. First, we derive fundamental properties of the problem and show that the problem is polynomially…
In this paper, we consider different constrained partition problems for weighted trees and cactus graphs. We focus on the (l,u)-partition problem, which is the problem of partitioning a weighted graph into connected clusters such that each…
In this paper we challenge the widely accepted premise that, in order to carry out a distributed computation, say on the cloud, users have to inform, along with all the inputs that the algorithm in use requires, the number of processors to…
An unconstrained nonlinear binary optimization problem of selecting a maximum expected value subset of items is considered. Each item is associated with a profit and probability. Each of the items succeeds or fails independently with the…
The benefits of a recently proposed method to approximate hard optimization problems are demonstrated on the graph partitioning problem. The performance of this new method, called Extremal Optimization, is compared to Simulated Annealing in…
In this paper, we consider an NP-hard problem of scheduling a set of jobs of equal processing time on two machines, given a partial precedence order on the set of jobs, with an objective to minimize the makespan. An approximation algorithm…
We study a natural variant of scheduling that we call \emph{partial scheduling}: In this variant an instance of a scheduling problem along with an integer $k$ is given and one seeks an optimal schedule where not all, but only $k$ jobs, have…
Routing and scheduling problems are fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization, and also have many applications. Most variations of these problems are NP-Hard, so we need to use heuristics to solve these problems on large instances,…
A well known N P-hard problem called the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP) is considered. In GTSP the nodes of a complete undirected graph are partitioned into clusters. The objective is to find a minimum cost tour passing…
The ridesharing problem is that given a set of trips, each trip consists of an individual, a vehicle of the individual and some requirements, select a subset of trips and use the vehicles of selected trips to deliver all individuals to…