PolyNet: Learning Diverse Solution Strategies for Neural Combinatorial Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Hottung, André, Mahajan, Mridul, Tierney, Kevin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Hottung, André
Mahajan, Mridul
Tierney, Kevin
author_facet Hottung, André
Mahajan, Mridul
Tierney, Kevin
contents Reinforcement learning-based methods for constructing solutions to combinatorial optimization problems are rapidly approaching the performance of human-designed algorithms. To further narrow the gap, learning-based approaches must efficiently explore the solution space during the search process. Recent approaches artificially increase exploration by enforcing diverse solution generation through handcrafted rules, however, these rules can impair solution quality and are difficult to design for more complex problems. In this paper, we introduce PolyNet, an approach for improving exploration of the solution space by learning complementary solution strategies. In contrast to other works, PolyNet uses only a single-decoder and a training schema that does not enforce diverse solution generation through handcrafted rules. We evaluate PolyNet on four combinatorial optimization problems and observe that the implicit diversity mechanism allows PolyNet to find better solutions than approaches that explicitly enforce diverse solution generation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_14048
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PolyNet: Learning Diverse Solution Strategies for Neural Combinatorial Optimization
Hottung, André
Mahajan, Mridul
Tierney, Kevin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Reinforcement learning-based methods for constructing solutions to combinatorial optimization problems are rapidly approaching the performance of human-designed algorithms. To further narrow the gap, learning-based approaches must efficiently explore the solution space during the search process. Recent approaches artificially increase exploration by enforcing diverse solution generation through handcrafted rules, however, these rules can impair solution quality and are difficult to design for more complex problems. In this paper, we introduce PolyNet, an approach for improving exploration of the solution space by learning complementary solution strategies. In contrast to other works, PolyNet uses only a single-decoder and a training schema that does not enforce diverse solution generation through handcrafted rules. We evaluate PolyNet on four combinatorial optimization problems and observe that the implicit diversity mechanism allows PolyNet to find better solutions than approaches that explicitly enforce diverse solution generation.
title PolyNet: Learning Diverse Solution Strategies for Neural Combinatorial Optimization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14048