Learning heuristic selection using a time delay neural network for open vehicle routing

Tyasnurita, Raras; �zcan, Ender; John, Robert

Abstract

A selection hyper-heuristic is a search method that controls a prefixed set of low-level heuristics for solving a given computationally difficult problem. This study investigates a learning-via demonstrations approach generating a selection hyper-heuristic for Open Vehicle Routing Problem (OVRP). As a chosen ‘expert’ hyper-heuristic is run on a small set of training problem instances, data is collected to learn from the expert regarding how to decide which low-level heuristic to select and apply to the solution in hand during the search process. In this study, a Time Delay Neural Network (TDNN) is used to extract hidden patterns within the collected data in the form of a classifier ,i.e an ‘apprentice’ hyper-heuristic, which is then used to solve the ‘unseen’ problem instances. Firstly, the parameters of TDNN are tuned using Taguchi orthogonal array as a design of experiments method. Then the influence of extending and enriching the information collected from the expert and fed into TDNN is explored on the behaviour of the generated apprentice hyper-heuristic. The empirical results show that the use of distance between solutions as an additional information collected from the expert generates an apprentice which outperforms the expert algorithm on a benchmark of OVRP instances.

Citation

Tyasnurita, R., Özcan, E., & John, R. Learning heuristic selection using a time delay neural network for open vehicle routing. Presented at IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2017

• Conference Name: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2017
• End Date: Jun 9, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jul 7, 2017
• Publication Date: Jun 6, 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 17, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/864883
• Publisher URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7969477/
• Related Public URLs: http://cec2017.org/
• Additional Information: © 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Published in conference proceedings with ISBN 9781509046010
• Contract Date: Mar 17, 2017