Study of Robust Features in Formulating Guidance for Heuristic Algorithms for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem

Combinatorial optimization problems, such as Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP), are important in real-world applications as they search for efficient solutions to minimize costs. Despite extensive research over decades, achieving optimal solutions remains a challenge (Laporte, 2009). Furthermore, the unique constraints of various problem variants demand specialized algorithms. The development of these algorithms is complex, making Machine Learning (ML) an attractive approach to improving the existing algorithms. Routing algorithms are typically divided into two categories: exact algorithms that offer global optimum but require many computational resources and heuristics methods for practical, real-world applications that mostly find a near-optimal solution. While most heuristics rely on human-designed strategies (Lucas et al., 2020), ML offers a new approach improving algorithm. Moreover, the selection of features influenced by these ML models plays a critical role in effectively enhancing heuristic performances (Arnold and S orensen, 2019b; Arnold and S orensen, 2019a; Lucas, Billot, and Sevaux, 2019). Understanding the predictions of an ML model can be as crucial as the accuracy of the prediction itself in many applications (Lundberg and Lee, 2017).