Deep Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wan, Pengfu, Chen, Jiawei, Xu, Gangyan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wan, Pengfu
Chen, Jiawei
Xu, Gangyan
author_facet Wan, Pengfu
Chen, Jiawei
Xu, Gangyan
contents The Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem (FSMVRP) is a prominent variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), extensively studied in operations research and computational science. FSMVRP requires simultaneous decisions on fleet composition and routing, making it highly applicable to real-world scenarios such as short-term vehicle rental and on-demand logistics. However, these requirements also increase the complexity of FSMVRP, posing significant challenges, particularly in large-scale and time-constrained environments. In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approach for solving FSMVRP, capable of generating near-optimal solutions within a few seconds. Specifically, we formulate the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and develop a novel policy network, termed FRIPN, that seamlessly integrates fleet composition and routing decisions. Our method incorporates specialized input embeddings designed for distinctdecision objectives, including a remaining graph embedding to facilitate effective vehicle employment decisions. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on both randomly generated instances and benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our method exhibits notable advantages in terms of computational efficiency and scalability, particularly in large-scale and time-constrained scenarios. These strengths highlight the potential of our approach for practical applications and provide valuable inspiration for extending DRL-based techniques to other variants of VRP.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_24251
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem
Wan, Pengfu
Chen, Jiawei
Xu, Gangyan
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
The Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem (FSMVRP) is a prominent variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), extensively studied in operations research and computational science. FSMVRP requires simultaneous decisions on fleet composition and routing, making it highly applicable to real-world scenarios such as short-term vehicle rental and on-demand logistics. However, these requirements also increase the complexity of FSMVRP, posing significant challenges, particularly in large-scale and time-constrained environments. In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approach for solving FSMVRP, capable of generating near-optimal solutions within a few seconds. Specifically, we formulate the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and develop a novel policy network, termed FRIPN, that seamlessly integrates fleet composition and routing decisions. Our method incorporates specialized input embeddings designed for distinctdecision objectives, including a remaining graph embedding to facilitate effective vehicle employment decisions. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on both randomly generated instances and benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our method exhibits notable advantages in terms of computational efficiency and scalability, particularly in large-scale and time-constrained scenarios. These strengths highlight the potential of our approach for practical applications and provide valuable inspiration for extending DRL-based techniques to other variants of VRP.
title Deep Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.24251