Related papers: Sample-Efficient, Exploration-Based Policy Optimis…

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been used to learn effective heuristics for solving complex combinatorial optimisation problem via policy networks and have demonstrated promising performance. Existing works have focused on solving…

We present an end-to-end framework for solving the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) using reinforcement learning. In this approach, we train a single model that finds near-optimal solutions for problem instances sampled from a given…

The traveling salesman problem is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem with strong exact algorithms. However, as problems scale up, these exact algorithms fail to provide a solution in a reasonable time. To resolve this, current…

Value-function-based methods have long played an important role in reinforcement learning. However, finding the best next action given a value function of arbitrary complexity is nontrivial when the action space is too large for…

This paper introduces a reinforcement learning approach to optimize the Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (SVRP), focusing on reducing travel costs in goods delivery. We develop a novel SVRP formulation that accounts for…

For NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, it is usually difficult to find high-quality solutions in polynomial time. The design of either an exact algorithm or an approximate algorithm for these problems often requires significantly…

This paper presents a framework to tackle constrained combinatorial optimization problems using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL). To this end, we extend the Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) theory in order to deal with constraints in…

Combinatorial optimization has found applications in numerous fields, from aerospace to transportation planning and economics. The goal is to find an optimal solution among a finite set of possibilities. The well-known challenge one faces…

Recent studies in using deep learning to solve routing problems focus on construction heuristics, the solutions of which are still far from optimality. Improvement heuristics have great potential to narrow this gap by iteratively refining a…

Many potential applications of reinforcement learning (RL) are stymied by the large numbers of samples required to learn an effective policy. This is especially true when applying RL to real-world control tasks, e.g. in the sciences or…

This study addresses a gap in the utilization of Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques in solving the Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem (SVRP) that involves the challenging task of optimizing vehicle routes under…

Current methods for end-to-end constructive neural combinatorial optimization usually train a policy using behavior cloning from expert solutions or policy gradient methods from reinforcement learning. While behavior cloning is…

In this paper, we evaluate the use of Reinforcement Learning (RL) to solve a classic combinatorial optimization problem: the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). We formalize this problem in the RL framework and compare two of the…

Learning to solve combinatorial optimization problems, such as the vehicle routing problem, offers great computational advantages over classical operations research solvers and heuristics. The recently developed deep reinforcement learning…

In the past decades, we have witnessed significant progress in the domain of autonomous driving. Advanced techniques based on optimization and reinforcement learning (RL) become increasingly powerful at solving the forward problem: given…

Sampling-based motion planning is a well-established approach in autonomous driving, valued for its modularity and analytical tractability. In complex urban scenarios, however, uniform or heuristic sampling often produces many infeasible or…

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…

One of the challenges in online reinforcement learning (RL) is that the agent needs to trade off the exploration of the environment and the exploitation of the samples to optimize its behavior. Whether we optimize for regret, sample…

We investigate an entropy-regularized reinforcement learning (RL) approach to optimal stopping problems motivated by real option models. Classical stopping rules are strict and non-randomized, limiting natural exploration in RL settings. To…

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…