Warehouse Vehicle Routing using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Abstract: In this study a Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm, MCTS-CNN, is applied on the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) in warehouses. Results in a simulated environment show that a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) can be pre-trained on VRP transition state features and then effectively used post-training within Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). When pre-training works well enough better results on warehouse VRP’s were often obtained than by a state of the art VRP Two-Phase algorithm. Although there are a number of issues that render current deployment pre-mature in two real warehouse environments MCTS-CNN shows high potential because of its strong scalability characteristics.