tsp
564127c03caab942e503ee6f810f54fd-Supplemental.pdf
This paper solves three NP-hard routing problems, traveling salesman problem (TSP), prize collecting TSP (PCTSP), and capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). This section provides detailed descriptions of PCTSP and CVRP (for TSP, see section 3). The PCTSP is similar to TSP, while there are differences in that we do not have to visit all the nodes and that the destination is not the first node but the depot node, i.e., a tour is not a cycle. Let N be the number of nodes. The problem instance of PCTSP is s = {(xi,λi,µi)}N+1i=1, where the xi R2 is in 2D euclidean coordinates, λi R is the penalty of unvisited node, and µi R is the prize of visited node. The L(π|s) is the tour length, and λ(π|s) is the total penalty of the unvisited nodes.
NeuroLKH: Combining Deep Learning Model with Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun Heuristic for Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem
We present NeuroLKH, a novel algorithm that combines deep learning with the strong traditional heuristic Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun (LKH) for solving Traveling Salesman Problem. Specifically, we train a Sparse Graph Network (SGN) with supervised learning for edge scores and unsupervised learning for node penalties, both of which are critical for improving the performance of LKH. Based on the output of SGN, NeuroLKH creates the edge candidate set and transforms edge distances to guide the searching process of LKH. Extensive experiments firmly demonstrate that, by training one model on a wide range of problem sizes, NeuroLKH significantly outperforms LKH and generalizes well to much larger sizes. Also, we show that NeuroLKH can be applied to other routing problems such as Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP), and CVRP with Time Windows (CVRPTW).
Sym-NCO: Leveraging Symmetricity for Neural Combinatorial Optimization
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based combinatorial optimization (CO) methods (i.e., DRL-NCO) have shown significant merit over the conventional CO solvers as DRL-NCO is capable of learning CO solvers less relying on problem-specific expert domain knowledge (heuristic method) and supervised labeled data (supervised learning method). This paper presents a novel training scheme, Sym-NCO, which is a regularizer-based training scheme that leverages universal symmetricities in various CO problems and solutions. Leveraging symmetricities such as rotational and reflectional invariance can greatly improve the generalization capability of DRL-NCO because it allows the learned solver to exploit the commonly shared symmetricities in the same CO problem class. Our experimental results verify that our Sym-NCO greatly improves the performance of DRL-NCO methods in four CO tasks, including the traveling salesman problem (TSP), capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), prize collecting TSP (PCTSP), and orienteering problem (OP), without utilizing problem-specific expert domain knowledge. Remarkably, SymNCO outperformed not only the existing DRL-NCO methods but also a competitive conventional solver, the iterative local search (ILS), in PCTSP at 240 faster speed.