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Learning to solve vehicle routing problems (VRPs) has garnered much attention. However, most neural solvers are only structured and trained independently on a specific problem, making them less generic and practical. In this paper, we aim…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Jianan Zhou , Zhiguang Cao , Yaoxin Wu , Wen Song , Yining Ma , Jie Zhang , Chi Xu

Solving NP-hard/complete combinatorial problems with neural networks is a challenging research area that aims to surpass classical approximate algorithms. The long-term objective is to outperform hand-designed heuristics for…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-02-14 Dobrik Georgiev , Danilo Numeroso , Davide Bacciu , Pietro Liò

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,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-02 Simone Foa , Corrado Coppola , Giorgio Grani , Laura Palagi

This paper reviews the current progress in applying machine learning (ML) tools to solve NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, with a focus on routing problems such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and the vehicle routing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-09 Fangting Zhou , Attila Lischka , Balazs Kulcsar , Jiaming Wu , Morteza Haghir Chehreghani , Gilbert Laporte

Machine learning has been adapted to help solve NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. One prevalent way is learning to construct solutions by deep neural networks, which has been receiving more and more attention due to the high…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Chengrui Gao , Haopu Shang , Ke Xue , Dong Li , Chao Qian

Neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) is a promising learning-based approach for solving challenging combinatorial optimization problems without specialized algorithm design by experts. However, most constructive NCO methods cannot solve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Fu Luo , Xi Lin , Fei Liu , Qingfu Zhang , Zhenkun Wang

Vehicle routing problems (VRPs) are central to combinatorial optimization with significant practical implications. Recent advancements in neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) have demonstrated promising results by leveraging neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Han Li , Fei Liu , Zhenkun Wang , Qingfu Zhang

In recent years new deep learning approaches to solve combinatorial optimization problems, in particular NP-hard Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP), have been proposed. The most impactful of these methods are sequential neural construction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-02 Jonas K. Falkner , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

Despite enjoying desirable efficiency and reduced reliance on domain expertise, existing neural methods for vehicle routing problems (VRPs) suffer from severe robustness issues -- their performance significantly deteriorates on clean…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Jianan Zhou , Yaoxin Wu , Zhiguang Cao , Wen Song , Jie Zhang , Zhiqi Shen

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-05-23 Mohammadreza Nazari , Afshin Oroojlooy , Lawrence V. Snyder , Martin Takáč

Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) has mostly focused on learning policies, typically neural networks, that operate on a single candidate solution at a time, either by constructing one from scratch or iteratively improving it. In…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Andoni Irazusta Garmendia , Josu Ceberio , Alexander Mendiburu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Ruben Solozabal , Josu Ceberio , Martin Takáč

While large language models (LLMs) have shown strong performance in math and logic reasoning, their ability to handle combinatorial optimization (CO) -- searching high-dimensional solution spaces under hard constraints -- remains…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Xia Jiang , Jing Chen , Cong Zhang , Jie Gao , Chengpeng Hu , Chenhao Zhang , Yaoxin Wu , Yingqian Zhang

Relevant combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) are often NP-hard. While they have been tackled mainly via handcrafted heuristics in the past, advances in neural networks have motivated the development of general methods to learn…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-05 Tim Dernedde , Daniela Thyssens , Sören Dittrich , Maximilian Stubbemann , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

Recent deep models for solving routing problems always assume a single distribution of nodes for training, which severely impairs their cross-distribution generalization ability. In this paper, we exploit group distributionally robust…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-16 Yuan Jiang , Yaoxin Wu , Zhiguang Cao , Jie Zhang

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-06 Daniela Thyssens , Jonas Falkner , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

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

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

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is a core NP-hard problem in the field of combinatorial optimization. It aims to plan optimal routes for a fleet of vehicles with uniform capacity, serving a set of customers with specific…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yongyu Chen

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-19 Joel Oren , Chana Ross , Maksym Lefarov , Felix Richter , Ayal Taitler , Zohar Feldman , Christian Daniel , Dotan Di Castro