arXiv Machine Learning

Learning Constraints-Based Adaptive Hypergraph Neural Networks for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems

The paper presents an end‑to‑end framework that uses constraint‑oriented hypergraphs and reinforcement learning to solve vehicle routing problems. It introduces a dynamic hyperedge reconstruction strategy for better hypergraph representation and a double‑pointer attention decoder for iterative solution generation. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that the method removes the need for complex heuristic operators while improving solution quality.

arXiv AI
Oct 27

From Comparison to Selection: Enhancing Cross-Scale Generalization of Pointer Networks Trained with Reinforcement Learning for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

The paper investigates why attention-based Pointer Networks, though size‑agnostic, lose performance when applied to different sized Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems (CVRP). It identifies three causes—node‑density shifts, attention dispersion, and diluted graph context—and evaluates architectural changes on both encoder and decoder sides, including a learned permutation‑invariant graph‑context aggregation. The authors show that entropy‑based attention scaling improves large‑to‑small transfer, while the new aggregation methods best aid small‑to‑large transfer, and they combine these insights into a selector that chooses the optimal model for each train‑test size pair, reducing costs by up to 3.2% across seen and many unseen sizes.

By Sofiene Lassoued, Devara Tertia, Stefan Lier, Andreas Schwung
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
Sep 2

Reinforcement Learning Enhanced LLM Agents for Complex Vehicle Routing Problems

The paper introduces Reinforcement Learning Enhanced LLM Agents (RLEA), a multi‑agent framework that automates the modeling of complex Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). RLEA employs a lightweight neural Planner trained with Soft Q‑learning to coordinate LLM‑based agents, and incorporates an evolutionary memory module and retrieval‑augmented generation to leverage experience and external solver knowledge. Experiments on 48 VRP variants show that RLEA outperforms the prior state‑of‑the‑art method, achieving a 16.67% higher success rate and significantly reducing runtime errors.

By Yi Chen, Zikang Yu, Jiahai Wang, Jinbiao Chen, Jianpeng Zhou, Zizhen Zhang
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