Inverse Optimization Latent Variable Models for Learning Costs Applied to Route Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lahoud, Alan A., Schaffernicht, Erik, Stork, Johannes A.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Lahoud, Alan A.
Schaffernicht, Erik
Stork, Johannes A.
author_facet Lahoud, Alan A.
Schaffernicht, Erik
Stork, Johannes A.
contents Learning representations for solutions of constrained optimization problems (COPs) with unknown cost functions is challenging, as models like (Variational) Autoencoders struggle to enforce constraints when decoding structured outputs. We propose an Inverse Optimization Latent Variable Model (IO-LVM) that learns a latent space of COP cost functions from observed solutions and reconstructs feasible outputs by solving a COP with a solver in the loop. Our approach leverages estimated gradients of a Fenchel-Young loss through a non-differentiable deterministic solver to shape the latent space. Unlike standard Inverse Optimization or Inverse Reinforcement Learning methods, which typically recover a single or context-specific cost function, IO-LVM captures a distribution over cost functions, enabling the identification of diverse solution behaviors arising from different agents or conditions not available during the training process. We validate our method on real-world datasets of ship and taxi routes, as well as paths in synthetic graphs, demonstrating its ability to reconstruct paths and cycles, predict their distributions, and yield interpretable latent representations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_15999
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Inverse Optimization Latent Variable Models for Learning Costs Applied to Route Problems
Lahoud, Alan A.
Schaffernicht, Erik
Stork, Johannes A.
Machine Learning
Learning representations for solutions of constrained optimization problems (COPs) with unknown cost functions is challenging, as models like (Variational) Autoencoders struggle to enforce constraints when decoding structured outputs. We propose an Inverse Optimization Latent Variable Model (IO-LVM) that learns a latent space of COP cost functions from observed solutions and reconstructs feasible outputs by solving a COP with a solver in the loop. Our approach leverages estimated gradients of a Fenchel-Young loss through a non-differentiable deterministic solver to shape the latent space. Unlike standard Inverse Optimization or Inverse Reinforcement Learning methods, which typically recover a single or context-specific cost function, IO-LVM captures a distribution over cost functions, enabling the identification of diverse solution behaviors arising from different agents or conditions not available during the training process. We validate our method on real-world datasets of ship and taxi routes, as well as paths in synthetic graphs, demonstrating its ability to reconstruct paths and cycles, predict their distributions, and yield interpretable latent representations.
title Inverse Optimization Latent Variable Models for Learning Costs Applied to Route Problems
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15999