Identifying and Exploiting Problem Structures Using Explanation-based Constraint Programming

Identifying structures in a given combinatorial problem is often a key step for designing efficient search heuristics or for understanding the inherent complexity of the problem. Several Operations Research approaches apply decomposition or relaxation strategies upon such a structure identified within a given problem. The next step is to design algorithms that adaptively integrate that kind of information during search. We claim in this paper, inspired by previous work on impact-based search strategies for constraint programming, that using an explanation-based constraint solver may lead to collect invaluable information on the intimate dynamically revealed and static structures of a problem instance. Moreover, we discuss how dedicated OR solving strategies (such as Benders decomposition) could be adapted to constraint programming when specific relationships between variables are exhibited.     

求解二维装箱问题的强化学习启发式算法

二维带形装箱问题是一个经典的NP-hard的组合优化问题,该问题在实际的生活和工业生产中有着广泛的应用.研究该问题,对企业节约成本、节约资源以及提高生产效率有着重要的意义.提出了一个强化学习求解算法.新颖地使用强化学习为启发式算法提供一个初始的装箱序列,有效地改善启发式冷启动的问题.该强化学习模型能进行自我驱动学习,仅使用启发式计算的解决方案的目标值作为奖励信号来优化网络,使网络能学习到更好的装箱序列.使用简化版的指针网络来解码输出装箱序列,该模型由嵌入层、解码器和注意力机制组成.使用Actor-Critic算法对模型进行训练,提高了模型的效率.在714个标准问题实例和随机生成的400个问题实例上测试提出的算法,实验结果显示：提出的算法能有效地改善启发式冷启动的问题,性能超过当前最优秀的启发式求解算法.     

A Constraint-Based Interactive Train Rescheduling Tool

In this paper, we report the design and implementation of a constraint-based interactive train rescheduling tool, a project in collaboration with the International Institute for Software Technology, United Nations University (UNU/IIST), Macau. We formulate train rescheduling as constraint satisfaction and describe a constraint propagation approach for tackling the problem. Algorithms for timetable verification and train rescheduling are designed under a coherent framework. Formal correctness properties of the rescheduling algorithm are established. We define two optimality criteria for rescheduling that correspond to minimizing the number of station visits affected and passenger delay respectively. Two heuristics are then proposed to speed up and direct the search towards optimal solutions. The feasibility of our proposed algorithms and heuristics are confirmed with experimentation using real-life data.     

Machine Discovery of Effective Admissible Heuristics

Admissible heuristics are an important class of heuristics worth discovering: they guarantee shortest path solutions in search algorithms such as A ^* and they guarantee less expensively produced, but boundedly longer solutions in search algorithms such as dynamic weighting. Unfortunately, effective (accurate and cheap to compute) admissible heuristics can take years for people to discover. Several researchers have suggested that certain transformations of a problem can be used to generate admissible heuristics. This article defines a more general class of transformations, called abstractions, that are guaranteed to generate only admissible heuristics. It also describes and evaluates an implemented program (Absolver II) that uses a means-ends analysis search control strategy to discover abstracted problems that result in effective admissible heuristics. Absolver II discovered several well-known and a few novel admissible heuristics, including the first known effective one for Rubik's Cube, thus concretely demonstrating that effective admissible heuristics can be tractably discovered by a machine.     

求解函数优化问题的反向自适应和声搜索算法

针对多维函数优化问题,提出2种新的反向自适应和声搜索算法。在自适应和声搜索算法的基础上,通过引入反向初始化操作,增强初始和声库的质量。设计一种反向自适应新和声搜索产生策略,加强算法的寻优能力。分别设计2种不同的和声微调概率的设置方式,并研究其对于算法收敛速度的影响。针对4个标准测试函数的仿真实验结果表明,与传统的和声搜索算法相比,2种算法的求解质量和收敛速度都有所提升。     

基于禁忌搜索的启发式任务路径规划算法

基于启发式搜索和禁忌搜索技术,提出一种用于解决有限资源、不同重要性要求的任务路径规划问题的有效算法,通过对不同重要程度的任务进行分层调度,得到较为满意的决策结果.该算法具有搜索空间小、求解速度快的优点.仿真结果验证了算法的有效性.     

Runtime Analysis of a Simple Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has become quite popular in recent years. In contrast to many successful applications, the theoretical foundation of this randomized search heuristic is rather weak. Building up such a theory is demanded to understand how these heuristics work as well as to come up with better algorithms for certain problems. Up to now, only convergence results have been achieved showing that optimal solutions can be obtained in finite time. We present the first runtime analysis of an ACO algorithm, which transfers many rigorous results with respect to the runtime of a simple evolutionary algorithm to our algorithm. Moreover, we examine the choice of the evaporation factor, a crucial parameter in ACO algorithms, in detail. By deriving new lower bounds on the tails of sums of independent Poisson trials, we determine the effect of the evaporation factor almost completely and prove a phase transition from exponential to polynomial runtime. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2006), volume 4288 of LNCS, pp. 618–627, Springer. Financial support for C. Witt by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB) in terms of the Collaborative Research Center “Computational Intelligence” (SFB 531) is gratefully acknowledged.     

New simple and efficient heuristics for the uncapacitated single allocation hub location problem

Hub-and-spoke networks are widely studied in the area of location theory. They arise in several contexts, including passenger airlines, postal and parcel delivery, and computer and telecommunication networks. Hub location problems usually involve three simultaneous decisions to be made: the optimal number of hub nodes, their locations and the allocation of the non-hub nodes to the hubs. In the uncapacitated single allocation hub location problem (USAHLP) hub nodes have no capacity constraints and non-hub nodes must be assigned to only one hub. In this paper, we propose three variants of a simple and efficient multi-start tabu search heuristic as well as a two-stage integrated tabu search heuristic to solve this problem. With multi-start heuristics, several different initial solutions are constructed and then improved by tabu search, while in the two-stage integrated heuristic tabu search is applied to improve both the locational and allocational part of the problem. Computational experiments using typical benchmark problems (Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and Australian Post (AP) data sets) as well as new and modified instances show that our approaches consistently return the optimal or best-known results in very short CPU times, thus allowing the possibility of efficiently solving larger instances of the USAHLP than those found in the literature. We also report the integer optimal solutions for all 80 CAB data set instances and the 12 AP instances up to 100 nodes, as well as for the corresponding new generated AP instances with reduced fixed costs.     

Heuristic evaluation functions in artificial intelligence search algorithms

We consider a special case of heuristics, namely numeric heuristic evaluation functions, and their use in artificial intelligence search algorithms. The problems they are applied to fall into three general classes: single-agent path-finding problems, two-player games, and constraint-satisfaction problems. In a single-agent path-finding problem, such as the Fifteen Puzzle or the travelling salesman problem, a single agent searches for a shortest path from an initial state to a goal state. Two-player games, such as chess and checkers, involve an adversarial relationship between two players, each trying to win the game. In a constraint-satisfaction, problem, such as the 8-Queens problem, the task is to find a state that satisfies a set of constraints. All of these problems are computationally intensive, and heuristic evaluation functions are used to reduce the amount of computation required to solve them. In each case we explain the nature of the evaluation functions used, how they are used in search algorithms, and how they can be automatically learned or acquired.     

A Survey of Automated Timetabling

The timetabling problem consists in scheduling a sequence of lectures between teachers and students in a prefixed period of time (typically a week), satisfying a set of constraints of various types. A large number of variants of the timetabling problem have been proposed in the literature, which differ from each other based on the type of institution involved (university or school) and the type of constraints. This problem, that has been traditionally considered in the operational research field, has recently been tackled with techniques belonging also to Artificial Intelligence (e.g., genetic algorithms, tabu search, and constraint satisfaction). In this paper, we survey the various formulations of the problem, and the techniques and algorithms used for its solution.     

多服务中心设置问题局部搜索算法的分析与实验

讨论了多服务中心设置问题的局部搜索近似算法及其在实际计算中表现出的新性质。首先对局部搜索算法求解多服务中心设置问题的实际近似性能比给出了一个针对性分析结果,然后编程实验对局部搜索求解算法的求解时间和求解质量进行了探讨。     

Learning search heuristics for finding objects in structured environments

We consider the problem of efficiently finding an object with a mobile robot in an initially unknown, structured environment. The overall goal is to allow the robot to improve upon a standard exploration technique by utilizing background knowledge from previously seen, similar environments. We present two conceptually different approaches. Whereas the first method, which is the focus of this article, is a reactive search technique that decides where to search next only based on local information about the objects in the robot’s vicinity, the second algorithm is a more global and inference-based approach that explicitly reasons about the location of the target object given all observations made so far. While the model underlying the first approach can be learned from data of optimal search paths, we learn the model of the second method from object arrangements of example environments. Our application scenario is the search for a product in a supermarket. We present simulation and real-world experiments in which we compare our strategies to alternative methods and also to the performance of humans.     

基于粒子群优化和禁忌搜索的混合调度算法

提出了用于解决作业车间调度问题的离散版粒子群优化算法。该算法采用基于先后表编码方案和新的位移更新模型,使具有连续本质的粒子群优化算法直接适用于车间调度问题。同时,利用粒子群优化算法的全局搜索能力和禁忌搜索算法的自适应优点,将粒子群优化算法和禁忌搜索结合起来,设计了广义粒子群优化算法和粒子群—禁忌搜索交替算法两种混合调度算法。实验结果表明,两种混合调度算法能够有效地、高质量地解决作业车间调度问题。