Related papers: Probabilistic Analysis of Optimization Problems on…
A shortest-path algorithm finds a path containing the minimal cost between two vertices in a graph. A plethora of shortest-path algorithms is studied in the literature that span across multiple disciplines. This paper presents a survey of…
In graph modification problems, one is given a graph G and the goal is to apply a minimum number of modification operations (such as edge deletions) to G such that the resulting graph fulfills a certain property. For example, the Cluster…
With applications to many disciplines, the traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a classical computer science optimization problem with applications to industrial engineering, theoretical computer science, bioinformatics, and several other…
The paper presents a comprehensive performance evaluation of some heuristic search algorithms in the context of autonomous systems and robotics. The objective of the study is to evaluate and compare the performance of different search…
Probabilistic sampling-based algorithms, such as the probabilistic roadmap (PRM) and the rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) algorithms, represent one of the most successful approaches to robotic motion planning, due to their strong…
In both industrial and service domains, a central benefit of the use of robots is their ability to quickly and reliably execute repetitive tasks. However, even relatively simple peg-in-hole tasks are typically subject to stochastic…
Extremal optimization is a new general-purpose method for approximating solutions to hard optimization problems. We study the method in detail by way of the NP-hard graph partitioning problem. We discuss the scaling behavior of extremal…
Trajectory optimization methods for motion planning attempt to generate trajectories that minimize a suitable objective function. Such methods efficiently find solutions even for high degree-of-freedom robots. However, a globally optimal…
We describe an exact algorithm for finding the best 2-OPT move which, experimentally, was observed to be much faster than the standard quadratic approach. To analyze its average-case complexity, we introduce a family of heuristic procedures…
In this work, we investigate a stochastic control framework for global optimization over both Euclidean spaces and the Wasserstein space of probability measures, where the objective function may be non-convex and/or non-differentiable. In…
Many discrete optimization problems amount to selecting a feasible set of edges of least weight. We consider in this paper the context of spatial graphs where the positions of the vertices are uncertain and belong to known uncertainty sets.…
We propose a simple subsampling scheme for fast randomized approximate computation of optimal transport distances. This scheme operates on a random subset of the full data and can use any exact algorithm as a black-box back-end, including…
2-Opt is probably the most basic local search heuristic for the TSP. This heuristic achieves amazingly good results on real world Euclidean instances both with respect to running time and approximation ratio. There are numerous experimental…
The Constraint Shortest Path (CSP) problem is as follows. An $n$-vertex graph is given, each edge/arc assigned two weights. Let us call them "cost" and "length" for definiteness. Finding a min-cost upper-bounded length path between a given…
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,…
This paper outlines the ideas behind developing a graph-based heuristic-driven routing algorithm designed for a particular instance of a goods transportation problem with a single good type. The proposed algorithm solves the optimization…
This paper discusses the shortest path problem in a general directed graph with $n$ nodes and $K$ cost scenarios (objectives). In order to choose a solution, the min-max criterion is applied. The min-max version of the problem is hard to…
This paper introduces a graph-based, potential-guided method for path planning problems in unknown environments, where obstacles are unknown until the robots are in close proximity to the obstacle locations. Inspired by optimal transport…
Given a linear system, we consider the problem of finding a small set of variables to affect with an input so that the resulting system is controllable. We show that this problem is NP-hard; indeed, we show that even approximating the…
The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is among the most famous NP-hard optimization problems. We design for this problem a randomized polynomial-time algorithm that computes a (1+eps)-approximation to the optimal tour, for any fixed eps>0,…