SmartPathfinder: Pushing the Limits of Heuristic Solutions for Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones Using Reinforcement Learning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reinforcement learning framework integrated with heuristic methods to significantly improve solution quality and speed in solving the complex Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones, especially for large-scale instances.

Contribution

It develops a universal RL-heuristic integration framework for VRPD, enhancing existing heuristics with learning-based improvements for better efficiency and effectiveness.

Findings

Enhanced solution quality with RL integration

Reduced computation time for large VRPD instances

Demonstrated benefits on state-of-the-art heuristics

Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones (VRPD) seeks to optimize the routing paths for both trucks and drones, where the trucks are responsible for delivering parcels to customer locations, and the drones are dispatched from these trucks for parcel delivery, subsequently being retrieved by the trucks. Given the NP-Hard complexity of VRPD, numerous heuristic approaches have been introduced. However, improving solution quality and reducing computation time remain significant challenges. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive examination of heuristic methods designed for solving VRPD, distilling and standardizing them into core elements. We then develop a novel reinforcement learning (RL) framework that is seamlessly integrated with the heuristic solution components, establishing a set of universal principles for incorporating the RL framework with heuristic strategies in an aim to improve both the solution quality and computation speed. This integration has been applied to a state-of-the-art heuristic solution for VRPD, showcasing the substantial benefits of incorporating the RL framework. Our evaluation results demonstrated that the heuristic solution incorporated with our RL framework not only elevated the quality of solutions but also achieved rapid computation speeds, especially when dealing with extensive customer locations.