English
Related papers

Related papers: SmartPathfinder: Pushing the Limits of Heuristic S…

200 papers

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-21 Orit Davidovich , Shimrit Shtern , Segev Wasserkrug , Nimrod Megiddo

This paper introduces RouteFinder, a comprehensive foundation model framework to tackle different Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) variants. Our core idea is that a foundation model for VRPs should be able to represent variants by treating…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Federico Berto , Chuanbo Hua , Nayeli Gast Zepeda , André Hottung , Niels Wouda , Leon Lan , Junyoung Park , Kevin Tierney , Jinkyoo Park

The integration of Reinforcement Learning (RL) with heuristic methods is an emerging trend for solving optimization problems, which leverages RL's ability to learn from the data generated during the search process. One promising approach is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-19 Arthur Müller , Lukas Vollenkemper

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is a fundamental NP-hard problem with broad applications in logistics and transportation. Real-world CVRPs often involve diverse objectives and complex constraints, such as time windows or…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Wen Wang , Xiangchen Wu , Liang Wang , Hao Hu , Xianping Tao

Motivated by the promising advances of deep-reinforcement learning (DRL) applied to cooperative multi-agent systems we propose a model and learning procedure to solve the Capacitated Multi-Vehicle Routing Problem (CMVRP) with fixed fleet…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2019-12-10 Jose Manuel Vera , Andres G. Abad

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have the potential to significantly reduce the cost and time of making last-mile deliveries and responding to emergencies. Despite this potential, little work has gone into developing vehicle routing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-08-09 Kevin Dorling , Jordan Heinrichs , Geoffrey G. Messier , Sebastian Magierowski

Learning how to automatically solve optimization problems has the potential to provide the next big leap in optimization technology. The performance of automatically learned heuristics on routing problems has been steadily improving in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-12-01 André Hottung , Kevin Tierney

Learning heuristics for vehicle routing problems (VRPs) has gained much attention due to the less reliance on hand-crafted rules. However, existing methods are typically trained and tested on the same task with a fixed size and distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Jianan Zhou , Yaoxin Wu , Wen Song , Zhiguang Cao , Jie Zhang

Planning safe trajectories under uncertain and dynamic conditions makes the autonomous driving problem significantly complex. Current sampling-based methods such as Rapidly Exploring Random Trees (RRTs) are not ideal for this problem…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-11-11 Kaleb Ben Naveed , Zhiqian Qiao , John M. Dolan

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has been shown to be effective in producing approximate solutions to some vehicle routing problems (VRPs), especially when using policies generated by encoder-decoder attention mechanisms. While these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Joshua Levin , Randall Correll , Takanori Ide , Takafumi Suzuki , Takaho Saito , Alan Arai

The Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem (FSMVRP) is a prominent variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), extensively studied in operations research and computational science. FSMVRP requires simultaneous decisions on fleet…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Pengfu Wan , Jiawei Chen , Gangyan Xu

Column generation (CG) is a vital method to solve large-scale problems by dynamically generating variables. It has extensive applications in common combinatorial optimization, such as vehicle routing and scheduling problems, where each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Kuan Xu , Li Shen , Lindong Liu

Designing high-performing metaheuristics for NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, such as the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), remains a significant challenge, often requiring extensive domain expertise and manual tuning. Recent…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Manuj Malik , Jianan Zhou , Shashank Reddy Chirra , Zhiguang Cao

Most reinforcement learning(RL)-based methods for drone racing target fixed, obstacle-free tracks, leaving the generalization to unknown, cluttered environments largely unaddressed. This challenge stems from the need to balance racing speed…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Feng Yu , Yu Hu , Yang Su , Yang Deng , Linzuo Zhang , Danping Zou

Neural routing solvers (NRSs) that leverage deep learning to tackle vehicle routing problems have demonstrated notable potential for practical applications. By learning implicit heuristic rules from data, NRSs replace the handcrafted…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-17 Yunpeng Ba , Xi Lin , Changliang Zhou , Ruihao Zheng , Zhenkun Wang , Xinyan Liang , Zhichao Lu , Jianyong Sun , Yuhua Qian , Qingfu Zhang

Joint parcel delivery by trucks and drones has enjoyed significant attention for some time, as the advantages of one delivery method offset the disadvantages of the other. This paper focuses on the vehicle routing problem with drones and…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2021-11-29 Felix Tamke , Udo Buscher

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most intensively studied combinatorial optimisation problems for which numerous models and algorithms have been proposed. To tackle the complexities, uncertainties and dynamics involved in…

The Hierarchical Directed Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (HDCARP) is an extension of the Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP), where the arcs of a graph are divided into classes based on their priority. The traversal of these classes is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Van Quang Nguyen , Quoc Chuong Nguyen , Thu Huong Dang , Truong-Son Hy

Routing problems are a class of combinatorial problems with many practical applications. Recently, end-to-end deep learning methods have been proposed to learn approximate solution heuristics for such problems. In contrast, classical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-06 Wouter Kool , Herke van Hoof , Joaquim Gromicho , Max Welling

Recently, there is an emerging trend to apply deep reinforcement learning to solve the vehicle routing problem (VRP), where a learnt policy governs the selection of next node for visiting. However, existing methods could not handle well the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-07 Jingwen Li , Liang Xin , Zhiguang Cao , Andrew Lim , Wen Song , Jie Zhang