RRNCO: Towards Real-World Routing with Neural Combinatorial Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Son, Jiwoo, Zhao, Zhikai, Berto, Federico, Hua, Chuanbo, Cao, Zhiguang, Kwon, Changhyun, Park, Jinkyoo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912965240815616
author Son, Jiwoo
Zhao, Zhikai
Berto, Federico
Hua, Chuanbo
Cao, Zhiguang
Kwon, Changhyun
Park, Jinkyoo
author_facet Son, Jiwoo
Zhao, Zhikai
Berto, Federico
Hua, Chuanbo
Cao, Zhiguang
Kwon, Changhyun
Park, Jinkyoo
contents The practical deployment of Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) for Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) is hindered by a critical sim-to-real gap. This gap stems not only from training on oversimplified Euclidean data but also from node-based architectures incapable of handling the node-and-edge-based features with correlated asymmetric cost matrices, such as those for real-world distance and duration. We introduce RRNCO, a novel architecture specifically designed to address these complexities. RRNCO's novelty lies in two key innovations. First, its Adaptive Node Embedding (ANE) efficiently fuses spatial coordinates with real-world distance features using a learned contextual gating mechanism. Second, its Neural Adaptive Bias (NAB) is the first mechanism to jointly model asymmetric distance, duration, and directional angles, enabling it to capture complex, realistic routing constraints. Moreover, we introduce a new VRP benchmark grounded in real-world data crucial for bridging this sim-to-real gap, featuring asymmetric distance and duration matrices from 100 diverse cities, enabling the training and validation of NCO solvers on tasks that are more representative of practical settings. Experiments demonstrate that RRNCO achieves state-of-the-art performance on this benchmark, significantly advancing the practical applicability of neural solvers for real-world logistics. Our code, dataset, and pretrained models are available at https://github.com/ai4co/real-routing-nco.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16159
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RRNCO: Towards Real-World Routing with Neural Combinatorial Optimization
Son, Jiwoo
Zhao, Zhikai
Berto, Federico
Hua, Chuanbo
Cao, Zhiguang
Kwon, Changhyun
Park, Jinkyoo
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The practical deployment of Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) for Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) is hindered by a critical sim-to-real gap. This gap stems not only from training on oversimplified Euclidean data but also from node-based architectures incapable of handling the node-and-edge-based features with correlated asymmetric cost matrices, such as those for real-world distance and duration. We introduce RRNCO, a novel architecture specifically designed to address these complexities. RRNCO's novelty lies in two key innovations. First, its Adaptive Node Embedding (ANE) efficiently fuses spatial coordinates with real-world distance features using a learned contextual gating mechanism. Second, its Neural Adaptive Bias (NAB) is the first mechanism to jointly model asymmetric distance, duration, and directional angles, enabling it to capture complex, realistic routing constraints. Moreover, we introduce a new VRP benchmark grounded in real-world data crucial for bridging this sim-to-real gap, featuring asymmetric distance and duration matrices from 100 diverse cities, enabling the training and validation of NCO solvers on tasks that are more representative of practical settings. Experiments demonstrate that RRNCO achieves state-of-the-art performance on this benchmark, significantly advancing the practical applicability of neural solvers for real-world logistics. Our code, dataset, and pretrained models are available at https://github.com/ai4co/real-routing-nco.
title RRNCO: Towards Real-World Routing with Neural Combinatorial Optimization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16159