Bin Packing Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wang, Baoying, Dong, Huixu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Wang, Baoying
Dong, Huixu
author_facet Wang, Baoying
Dong, Huixu
contents The Bin Packing Problem (BPP) has attracted enthusiastic research interest recently, owing to widespread applications in logistics and warehousing environments. It is truly essential to optimize the bin packing to enable more objects to be packed into boxes. Object packing order and placement strategy are the two crucial optimization objectives of the BPP. However, existing optimization methods for BPP, such as the genetic algorithm (GA), emerge as the main issues in highly computational cost and relatively low accuracy, making it difficult to implement in realistic scenarios. To well relieve the research gaps, we present a novel optimization methodology of two-dimensional (2D)-BPP and three-dimensional (3D)-BPP for objects with regular shapes via deep reinforcement learning (DRL), maximizing the space utilization and minimizing the usage number of boxes. First, an end-to-end DRL neural network constructed by a modified Pointer Network consisting of an encoder, a decoder and an attention module is proposed to achieve the optimal object packing order. Second, conforming to the top-down operation mode, the placement strategy based on a height map is used to arrange the ordered objects in the boxes, preventing the objects from colliding with boxes and other objects in boxes. Third, the reward and loss functions are defined as the indicators of the compactness, pyramid, and usage number of boxes to conduct the training of the DRL neural network based on an on-policy actor-critic framework. Finally, a series of experiments are implemented to compare our method with conventional packing methods, from which we conclude that our method outperforms these packing methods in both packing accuracy and efficiency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_12420
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bin Packing Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning
Wang, Baoying
Dong, Huixu
Robotics
The Bin Packing Problem (BPP) has attracted enthusiastic research interest recently, owing to widespread applications in logistics and warehousing environments. It is truly essential to optimize the bin packing to enable more objects to be packed into boxes. Object packing order and placement strategy are the two crucial optimization objectives of the BPP. However, existing optimization methods for BPP, such as the genetic algorithm (GA), emerge as the main issues in highly computational cost and relatively low accuracy, making it difficult to implement in realistic scenarios. To well relieve the research gaps, we present a novel optimization methodology of two-dimensional (2D)-BPP and three-dimensional (3D)-BPP for objects with regular shapes via deep reinforcement learning (DRL), maximizing the space utilization and minimizing the usage number of boxes. First, an end-to-end DRL neural network constructed by a modified Pointer Network consisting of an encoder, a decoder and an attention module is proposed to achieve the optimal object packing order. Second, conforming to the top-down operation mode, the placement strategy based on a height map is used to arrange the ordered objects in the boxes, preventing the objects from colliding with boxes and other objects in boxes. Third, the reward and loss functions are defined as the indicators of the compactness, pyramid, and usage number of boxes to conduct the training of the DRL neural network based on an on-policy actor-critic framework. Finally, a series of experiments are implemented to compare our method with conventional packing methods, from which we conclude that our method outperforms these packing methods in both packing accuracy and efficiency.
title Bin Packing Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12420