Cross-Problem Learning for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lin, Zhuoyi, Wu, Yaoxin, Zhou, Bangjian, Cao, Zhiguang, Song, Wen, Zhang, Yingqian, Jayavelu, Senthilnath
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929390805319680
author Lin, Zhuoyi
Wu, Yaoxin
Zhou, Bangjian
Cao, Zhiguang
Song, Wen
Zhang, Yingqian
Jayavelu, Senthilnath
author_facet Lin, Zhuoyi
Wu, Yaoxin
Zhou, Bangjian
Cao, Zhiguang
Song, Wen
Zhang, Yingqian
Jayavelu, Senthilnath
contents Existing neural heuristics often train a deep architecture from scratch for each specific vehicle routing problem (VRP), ignoring the transferable knowledge across different VRP variants. This paper proposes the cross-problem learning to assist heuristics training for different downstream VRP variants. Particularly, we modularize neural architectures for complex VRPs into 1) the backbone Transformer for tackling the travelling salesman problem (TSP), and 2) the additional lightweight modules for processing problem-specific features in complex VRPs. Accordingly, we propose to pre-train the backbone Transformer for TSP, and then apply it in the process of fine-tuning the Transformer models for each target VRP variant. On the one hand, we fully fine-tune the trained backbone Transformer and problem-specific modules simultaneously. On the other hand, we only fine-tune small adapter networks along with the modules, keeping the backbone Transformer still. Extensive experiments on typical VRPs substantiate that 1) the full fine-tuning achieves significantly better performance than the one trained from scratch, and 2) the adapter-based fine-tuning also delivers comparable performance while being notably parameter-efficient. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate the favorable effect of our method in terms of cross-distribution application and versatility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_11677
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cross-Problem Learning for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems
Lin, Zhuoyi
Wu, Yaoxin
Zhou, Bangjian
Cao, Zhiguang
Song, Wen
Zhang, Yingqian
Jayavelu, Senthilnath
Artificial Intelligence
Existing neural heuristics often train a deep architecture from scratch for each specific vehicle routing problem (VRP), ignoring the transferable knowledge across different VRP variants. This paper proposes the cross-problem learning to assist heuristics training for different downstream VRP variants. Particularly, we modularize neural architectures for complex VRPs into 1) the backbone Transformer for tackling the travelling salesman problem (TSP), and 2) the additional lightweight modules for processing problem-specific features in complex VRPs. Accordingly, we propose to pre-train the backbone Transformer for TSP, and then apply it in the process of fine-tuning the Transformer models for each target VRP variant. On the one hand, we fully fine-tune the trained backbone Transformer and problem-specific modules simultaneously. On the other hand, we only fine-tune small adapter networks along with the modules, keeping the backbone Transformer still. Extensive experiments on typical VRPs substantiate that 1) the full fine-tuning achieves significantly better performance than the one trained from scratch, and 2) the adapter-based fine-tuning also delivers comparable performance while being notably parameter-efficient. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate the favorable effect of our method in terms of cross-distribution application and versatility.
title Cross-Problem Learning for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.11677