Related papers: Enhancing Column Generation by Reinforcement Learn…

We consider a wide family of vehicle routing problem variants with many complex and practical constraints, known as rich vehicle routing problems, which are faced on a daily basis by C.H. Robinson (CHR). Since CHR has many customers, each…

Recently, the applications of the methodologies of Reinforcement Learning (RL) to NP-Hard Combinatorial optimization problems have become a popular topic. This is essentially due to the nature of the traditional combinatorial algorithms,…

Column generation (CG) is a powerful technique for solving optimization problems that involve a large number of variables or columns. This technique begins by solving a smaller problem with a subset of columns and gradually generates…

During natural or anthropogenic disasters, humanitarian organizations face a series of time-sensitive tasks. One of the tasks involves picking up critical resources (e.g., first aid kits, blankets, water) from warehouses and delivering them…

We consider a family of Rich Vehicle Routing Problems (RVRP) which have the particularity to combine a heterogeneous fleet with other attributes, such as backhauls, multiple depots, split deliveries, site dependency, open routes, duration…

Managing disruptions in railway traffic management is a major challenge. Rising traffic density and infrastructure limits increase complexity, making the Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem (VRSP) difficult to solve reliably and in real…

Long-horizon combinatorial optimization problems (COPs), such as the Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (FJSP), often involve complex, interdependent decisions over extended time frames, posing significant challenges for existing solvers.…

Solving NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) (e.g., traveling salesman problems (TSPs) and capacitated vehicle routing problems (CVRPs)) in practice traditionally involves handcrafting heuristics or specifying a search space…

Strategic aggregation of electric vehicle batteries as energy reservoirs can optimize power grid demand, benefiting smart and connected communities, especially large office buildings that offer workplace charging. This involves optimizing…

Recent work investigated the use of Reinforcement Learning (RL) for the synthesis of heuristic guidance to improve the performance of temporal planners when a domain is fixed and a set of training problems (not plans) is given. The idea is…

We tackle the problem of accelerating column generation (CG) approaches to set cover formulations in operations research. At each iteration of CG we generate a dual solution that approximately solves the LP over all columns consisting of a…

The resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is an NP-Hard combinatorial optimization problem. The objective of RCPSP is to schedule a set of activities without violating any activity precedence or resource constraints. In…

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…

Robots performing tasks in warehouses provide the first example of wide-spread adoption of autonomous vehicles in transportation and logistics. The efficiency of these operations, which can vary widely in practice, are a key factor in the…

We introduce a simple, accurate, and extremely efficient method for numerically solving the multi-marginal optimal transport (MMOT) problems arising in density functional theory. The method relies on (i) the sparsity of optimal plans [for…

Recent advancements in the flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSSP) are primarily based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) due to its ability to generate high-quality, real-time solutions. However, DRL approaches often fail to fully…

This study investigates the potential of hybrid metaheuristic algorithms to enhance the training of Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNNs) by leveraging the complementary strengths of multiple optimisation strategies. Traditional learning…

This paper presents an approach to learn the local-search heuristics that iteratively improves the solution of Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). A local-search heuristics is composed of a destroy operator that destructs a candidate solution,…

Safety in goal directed Reinforcement Learning (RL) settings has typically been handled through constraints over trajectories and have demonstrated good performance in primarily short horizon tasks. In this paper, we are specifically…

For reinforcement learning (RL), it is challenging for an agent to master a task that requires a specific series of actions due to sparse rewards. To solve this problem, reverse curriculum generation (RCG) provides a reverse expansion…