arXiv:2503. 03137v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Constructive neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) offers a promising paradigm for solving vehicle routing problems (VRPs) by directly learning to construct approximate optimal solutions, thereby reducing reliance on expert knowledge for algorithm design.
By Changliang Zhou, Xi Lin, Zhenkun Wang, Qingfu Zhang
MiLoop is a reinforcement‑learning‑based constructive framework for neural combinatorial optimization that propagates selective memory across rollout steps. By fusing current embeddings with historical memory before attention layers and applying adaptive gated updates afterward, it enables a shallow policy to learn dynamic embeddings without external solution labels or search‑space pruning. Experiments on four combinatorial optimization problems show MiLoop consistently generates high‑quality solutions for instances ranging from 100 to 10 million nodes, demonstrating strong generalization.
By Changliang Zhou, Yuanyao Chen, Rongsheng Chen, Zhiyun Lin, Zhenkun Wang
arXiv:2608.24859v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Multi-task vehicle routing problem (VRP) solvers seek to handle multiple VRP variants within a single unified model, avoiding the need to train a separ...
By Arthur Corr\^ea, Paulo Nascimento, Samuel Moniz
arXiv:2509. 23413v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Multi-task neural routing solvers have emerged as a promising paradigm for their ability to solve multiple vehicle routing problems (VRPs) using a single model.
By Changliang Zhou, Canhong Yu, Shunyu Yao, Xi Lin, Zhenkun Wang, Yu Zhou, Qingfu Zhang
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:2606. 09343v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural combinatorial optimization has recently achieved strong results on the Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) using generative models such as diffusion and consistency models.
By Micka\"el Basson (CRIStAL, Scool), Philippe Preux (CRIStAL, Scool)
The paper investigates how temporal recurrence affects the required depth of neural networks in streaming tasks. By treating depth, expert width, and parallel experts as a compute‑allocation problem, the authors compare recurrent and non‑recurrent models across various compute budgets. Experiments on Sokoban and FineWeb language modeling show that recurrence shifts the optimal compute allocation toward fewer layers while maintaining or improving performance.
By Ivan Anokhin, Johan Obando-Ceron, Irina Rish, Sebastian Risi
arXiv:2405. 13947v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Deep neural networks based on reinforcement learning (RL) for solving combinatorial optimization (CO) problems are developing rapidly and have shown a tendency to approach or even outperform traditional solvers.
By Chaoyang Wang, Pengzhi Cheng, Jingze Li, Weiwei Sun
arXiv:2605. 09382v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Linear Assignment Problem is a fundamental combinatorial optimization task where classical exact solvers ensure optimality but suffer from an $\mathcal{O}(N^{3})$ bottleneck, while recent neural approximations struggle with scalability and exactness.
By Ilay Yavlovich, Jad Agbaria, Muhamed Mhamed, Nir Weinberger, Jose Yallouz
arXiv:2311. 02629v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce the Pointer Q-Network (PQN), a hybrid neural architecture that integrates model-free Q-value policy approximation with Pointer Networks (Ptr-Nets) to enhance the optimality of attention-based sequence generation, focusing on long-term outcomes.
By Alessandro Barro
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: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