arXiv AI

Understanding Human-like Solutions in Combinatorial Optimization via Learning and Search

arXiv:2607. 23854v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Humans often find good solutions to combinatorial optimization problems that are computationally hard even for advanced computer algorithms.

arXiv AI
Jul 7

Graph Neural Networks are Heuristics

arXiv:2601. 13465v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Graph neural networks are usually treated as auxiliaries for combinatorial optimization: they imitate algorithms, guide search, or supply scores to classical procedures.

By Yimeng Min, Carla P. Gomes
arXiv AI
Aug 25

Memory-Enhanced Neural Solvers for Routing Problems

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 Machine Learning
Aug 5

Beyond Solving: Prescriptive Probing for Neural Routing Solvers

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 AI
Jul 15

Connected by Construction: Learning Tractable Near-Tour Marginals for Traveling Salesman Problems

arXiv:2607. 12127v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Learning-based methods for the traveling salesman problem (TSP) are often evaluated through the tours produced after decoding or search, but the learned object itself frequently lives in a surrogate space such as heatmaps, assignments, construction policies, or search-guidance scores.

By Ke Sun, Xinyuan Zhang, Xinwu Qian