Related papers: Combining Reinforcement Learning and Constraint Pr…
Combinatorial optimization is the field devoted to the study and practice of algorithms that solve NP-hard problems. As Machine Learning (ML) and deep learning have popularized, several research groups have started to use ML to solve…
Since the 1990s, considerable empirical work has been carried out to train statistical models, such as neural networks (NNs), as learned heuristics for combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. When successful, such an approach eliminates…
Recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) frameworks have shown potential for solving NP-hard routing problems such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP) without problem-specific expert knowledge. Although DRL can be used to solve…
Combinatorial optimization problem (COP) over graphs is a fundamental challenge in optimization. Reinforcement learning (RL) has recently emerged as a new framework to tackle these problems and has demonstrated promising results. However,…
Scheduling is a fundamental task occurring in various automated systems applications, e.g., optimal schedules for machines on a job shop allow for a reduction of production costs and waste. Nevertheless, finding such schedules is often…
We introduce Limited Rollout Beam Search (LRBS), a beam search strategy for deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based combinatorial optimization improvement heuristics. Utilizing pre-trained models on the Euclidean Traveling Salesperson…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently shown its success in tackling complex combinatorial optimization problems. When these problems are extended to multiobjective ones, it becomes difficult for the existing DRL approaches to…
This paper proposes a novel approach based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for the 2D+1 packing problem with spatial constraints. This problem is an extension of the traditional 2D packing problem, incorporating an additional…
We study combinatorial problems with real world applications such as machine scheduling, routing, and assignment. We propose a method that combines Reinforcement Learning (RL) and planning. This method can equally be applied to both the…
Many real-world problems can be reduced to combinatorial optimization on a graph, where the subset or ordering of vertices that maximize some objective function must be found. With such tasks often NP-hard and analytically intractable,…
Combinatorial optimization problems like the Traveling Salesman Problem are critical in industry yet NP-hard. Neural Combinatorial Optimization has shown promise, but its reliance on online reinforcement learning (RL) hampers deployment and…
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has become a popular method for solving control problems in power systems. Conventional DRL encourages the agent to explore various policies encoded in a neural network (NN) with the goal of maximizing the…
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has emerged as a promising approach for solving Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems, such as the 3D Bin Packing Problem (3D-BPP), Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), or Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), but…
Machine learning has increasingly been employed to solve NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, resulting in the emergence of neural solvers that demonstrate remarkable performance, even with minimal domain-specific knowledge. To…
Over the recent years, reinforcement learning (RL) starts to show promising results in tackling combinatorial optimization (CO) problems, in particular when coupled with curriculum learning to facilitate training. Despite emerging empirical…
This paper introduces a new deep learning approach to approximately solve the Covering Salesman Problem (CSP). In this approach, given the city locations of a CSP as input, a deep neural network model is designed to directly output the…
Optimization problems characterized by both discrete and continuous variables are common across various disciplines, presenting unique challenges due to their complex solution landscapes and the difficulty of navigating mixed-variable…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based combinatorial optimization (CO) methods (i.e., DRL-NCO) have shown significant merit over the conventional CO solvers as DRL-NCO is capable of learning CO solvers less relying on problem-specific…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) faces significant challenges in addressing the hard-exploration problems in tasks with sparse or deceptive rewards and large state spaces. These challenges severely limit the practical application of DRL.…
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has achieved great success in solving complicated decision-making problems. Despite the successes, DRL is frequently criticized for many reasons, e.g., data inefficient, inflexible and intractable reward…