The paper introduces a novel end‑to‑end, size‑agnostic graph reinforcement learning framework for the one‑dimensional bin packing problem (1D‑BPP). It models packing as a Markov decision process on an item‑compatibility graph, where a graph neural network actor‑critic policy learns to merge compatible partial bins. Empirical results on the BPPLIB benchmark show that the learned policy reduces the mean optimality gap of a constructive heuristic from 2.66 % to 2.31 %, performs competitively against other learned methods, and outperforms a state‑of‑the‑art learned solver on the hardest benchmark family.
By M. Asl{\i} Ayd{\i}n
arXiv:2602. 07216v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) trains fast heuristics for routing problems, but planners often need more than a single solve: they ask which stop to drop, which transition to preserve, or which subset of stops to remove if a route is infeasible.
By Reuben Narad, L\'eonard Boussioux, Michael Wagner
arXiv:2608. 14569v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural solvers for constraint satisfaction problems have achieved remarkable in-distribution accuracy, yet they suffer from a fundamental limitation persistent constraint violations occur under distribution shifts even when the model reports high confidence.
By Shufeng Kong, Xiaochuan Zhang, Caihua Liu
The paper introduces MEMENTO, a memory‑enhanced neural solver that improves routing problem solutions by using online data from repeated attempts to adjust action distributions during inference. It targets NP‑hard routing tasks such as the Traveling Salesman and Capacitated Vehicle Routing problems, outperforming existing tree‑search and policy‑gradient fine‑tuning methods. MEMENTO demonstrates strong scalability and data efficiency, achieving state‑of‑the‑art results on 11 of 12 evaluated tasks and enabling zero‑shot integration with diversity‑based solvers.
By Felix Chalumeau, Refiloe Shabe, Noah De Nicola, Arnu Pretorius, Thomas D. Barrett, Nathan Grinsztajn
arXiv:2501. 17377v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has emerged as a promising approach for solving Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems, such as the 3D Bin Packing Problem (3D-BPP), Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), or Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), but these neural solvers often exhibit brittleness when facing distribution shifts.
By Han Fang, Paul Weng, Yutong Ban
arXiv:2606. 04597v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Admissible heuristics are essential for optimal planning, yet learning them remains challenging due to the risk of overestimation.
By Hugo Barral, Quentin Cappart, Marie-Jos\'e Huguet, Sylvie Thi\'ebaux
arXiv:2606. 06877v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Task planning often suffers from severe efficiency bottlenecks when robots must reason over long-horizon action sequences under complex logical constraints, including object affordances, spatial relationships, and sequential action dependencies.
By Qiwei Du, Zitong Zhan, Shaoshu Su, Bowen Li, Yi Du, Zhipeng Zhao, Taimeng Fu, Sebastian Scherer, Jiaoyang Li, Chen Wang
arXiv:2606. 27369v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for training LLMs typically rely on ground-truth answers to assign rewards, limiting their applicability to tasks where the ground-truth solution is unknown.
By Yingyu Lin, Qiyue Gao, Nikki Lijing Kuang, Xunpeng Huang, Kun Zhou, Tongtong Liang, Zhewei Yao, Yi-An Ma, Yuxiong He
arXiv:2602. 14772v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Winner Determination Problem (WDP) in combinatorial auctions is NP-hard, and no existing method reliably predicts which instances will defeat fast greedy heuristics.
By Sungwoo Kang
arXiv:2601. 22211v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) with combinatorial action spaces remains challenging because feasible action sets are exponentially large and governed by complex feasibility constraints, making direct policy parameterization impractical.
By Lingkai Kong, Anagha Satish, Hezi Jiang, Akseli Kangaslahti, Andrew Ma, Wenbo Chen, Mingxiao Song, Lily Xu, Milind Tambe
arXiv:2606. 18514v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) offers a promising alternative to traditional heuristic-based methods for solving complex graph optimization problems by proposing to learn heuristics through data.
By Anas Saeed, Marcos Abel Zuzu\'arregui, Stefano Carpin
arXiv:2606. 00618v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generative models have emerged as a powerful paradigm for AI planning, yet their performance remains constrained by the training data distribution.
By Robert Gieselmann, Mihai Samson, Federico Pecora, Jeremy L. Wyatt