Hierarchical Neural Constructive Solver for Real-world TSP Scenarios

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Goh, Yong Liang, Cao, Zhiguang, Ma, Yining, Dong, Yanfei, Dupty, Mohammed Haroon, Lee, Wee Sun
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Goh, Yong Liang
Cao, Zhiguang
Ma, Yining
Dong, Yanfei
Dupty, Mohammed Haroon
Lee, Wee Sun
author_facet Goh, Yong Liang
Cao, Zhiguang
Ma, Yining
Dong, Yanfei
Dupty, Mohammed Haroon
Lee, Wee Sun
contents Existing neural constructive solvers for routing problems have predominantly employed transformer architectures, conceptualizing the route construction as a set-to-sequence learning task. However, their efficacy has primarily been demonstrated on entirely random problem instances that inadequately capture real-world scenarios. In this paper, we introduce realistic Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) scenarios relevant to industrial settings and derive the following insights: (1) The optimal next node (or city) to visit often lies within proximity to the current node, suggesting the potential benefits of biasing choices based on current locations. (2) Effectively solving the TSP requires robust tracking of unvisited nodes and warrants succinct grouping strategies. Building upon these insights, we propose integrating a learnable choice layer inspired by Hypernetworks to prioritize choices based on the current location, and a learnable approximate clustering algorithm inspired by the Expectation-Maximization algorithm to facilitate grouping the unvisited cities. Together, these two contributions form a hierarchical approach towards solving the realistic TSP by considering both immediate local neighbourhoods and learning an intermediate set of node representations. Our hierarchical approach yields superior performance compared to both classical and recent transformer models, showcasing the efficacy of the key designs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_03585
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hierarchical Neural Constructive Solver for Real-world TSP Scenarios
Goh, Yong Liang
Cao, Zhiguang
Ma, Yining
Dong, Yanfei
Dupty, Mohammed Haroon
Lee, Wee Sun
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Existing neural constructive solvers for routing problems have predominantly employed transformer architectures, conceptualizing the route construction as a set-to-sequence learning task. However, their efficacy has primarily been demonstrated on entirely random problem instances that inadequately capture real-world scenarios. In this paper, we introduce realistic Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) scenarios relevant to industrial settings and derive the following insights: (1) The optimal next node (or city) to visit often lies within proximity to the current node, suggesting the potential benefits of biasing choices based on current locations. (2) Effectively solving the TSP requires robust tracking of unvisited nodes and warrants succinct grouping strategies. Building upon these insights, we propose integrating a learnable choice layer inspired by Hypernetworks to prioritize choices based on the current location, and a learnable approximate clustering algorithm inspired by the Expectation-Maximization algorithm to facilitate grouping the unvisited cities. Together, these two contributions form a hierarchical approach towards solving the realistic TSP by considering both immediate local neighbourhoods and learning an intermediate set of node representations. Our hierarchical approach yields superior performance compared to both classical and recent transformer models, showcasing the efficacy of the key designs.
title Hierarchical Neural Constructive Solver for Real-world TSP Scenarios
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03585