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Combinatorial Optimization (CO) has been a long-standing challenging research topic featured by its NP-hard nature. Traditionally such problems are approximately solved with heuristic algorithms which are usually fast but may sacrifice the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Runzhong Wang , Zhigang Hua , Gan Liu , Jiayi Zhang , Junchi Yan , Feng Qi , Shuang Yang , Jun Zhou , Xiaokang Yang

Recent advances in graph neural network architectures and increased computation power have revolutionized the field of combinatorial optimization (CO). Among the proposed models for CO problems, Neural Improvement (NI) models have been…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Andoni I. Garmendia , Josu Ceberio , Alexander Mendiburu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-08 Elija Deineko , Carina Kehrt

Efficiently training a multi-task neural solver for various combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) has been less studied so far. Naive application of conventional multi-task learning approaches often falls short in delivering a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Chenguang Wang , Zhang-Hua Fu , Pinyan Lu , Tianshu Yu

The neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) method has shown great potential for solving routing problems of intelligent transportation systems without requiring expert knowledge. However, existing constructive NCO methods still struggle to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Changliang Zhou , Xi Lin , Zhenkun Wang , Xialiang Tong , Mingxuan Yuan , Qingfu Zhang

Solving combinatorial optimization (CO) on graphs is among the fundamental tasks for upper-stream applications in data mining, machine learning and operations research. Despite the inherent NP-hard challenge for CO, heuristics,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Han Lu , Zenan Li , Runzhong Wang , Qibing Ren , Junchi Yan , Xiaokang Yang

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…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-09-15 Kaiwen Li , Tao Zhang , Rui Wang Yuheng Wang , Yi Han

Multiobjective combinatorial optimization (MOCO) problems can be found in many real-world applications. However, exactly solving these problems would be very challenging, particularly when they are NP-hard. Many handcrafted heuristic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-10 Xi Lin , Zhiyuan Yang , Qingfu Zhang

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,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-22 Thomas D. Barrett , William R. Clements , Jakob N. Foerster , A. I. Lvovsky

Numerous Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) solvers have been proposed to address Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). However, most of these solvers focus exclusively on single-vehicle VRP variants, overlooking the more realistic min-max…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Xuan Wu , Di Wang , Chunguo Wu , Kaifang Qi , Chunyan Miao , Yubin Xiao , Jian Zhang , You Zhou

Combinatorial optimization problems involving multiple agents are notoriously challenging due to their NP-hard nature and the necessity for effective agent coordination. Despite advancements in learning-based methods, existing approaches…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Federico Berto , Chuanbo Hua , Laurin Luttmann , Jiwoo Son , Junyoung Park , Kyuree Ahn , Changhyun Kwon , Lin Xie , Jinkyoo Park

Unsupervised learning (UL)-based solvers for combinatorial optimization (CO) train a neural network that generates a soft solution by directly optimizing the CO objective using a continuous relaxation strategy. These solvers offer several…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-01 Yuma Ichikawa

Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems over graphs appear routinely in many applications such as in optimizing traffic, viral marketing in social networks, and matching for job allocation. Due to their combinatorial nature, these problems…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-02 Hao Tian , Sourav Medya , Wei Ye

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a classic NP-hard combinatorial optimization task with numerous practical applications. Classic heuristic solvers can attain near-optimal performance for small problem instances, but become…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-13 Michael Li , Eric Bae , Christopher Haberland , Natasha Jaques

The Traveling Salesman Problem is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem widely studied in operations research. Despite its simple formulation, it remains computationally challenging due to the exponential growth of the search…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-28 Alessia Ciacco , Luigi Di Puglia Pugliese , Francesca Guerriero

Recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) models have shown promising results in solving NP-hard Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems. However, most DRL solvers can only scale to a few hundreds of nodes for combinatorial optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-26 Ruizhong Qiu , Zhiqing Sun , Yiming Yang

We present a self-learning approach that combines deep reinforcement learning and Monte Carlo tree search to solve the traveling salesman problem. The proposed approach has two advantages. First, it adopts deep reinforcement learning to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-15 Zhihao Xing , Shikui Tu , Lei Xu

Robotic systems often require a team of robots to collectively visit multiple targets while optimizing competing objectives, such as total travel cost and makespan. This setting can be formulated as the Multi-Objective Multiple Traveling…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Fengxiaoxiao Li , Xiao Mao , Mingfeng Fan , Yifeng Zhang , Yi Li , Tanishq Duhan , Guillaume Sartoretti

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,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-05 Fan Yao , Renqin Cai , Hongning Wang