CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing

The online bin packing problem is a well-known bin packing variant which requires immediate decisions to be made for the placement of a lengthy sequence of arriving items of various sizes one at a time into fixed capacity bins without any overflow. The overall goal is maximising the average bin full...

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Main Authors: Asta, Shahriar, Özcan, Ender, Parkes, Andrew J.
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34610/
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author Asta, Shahriar
Özcan, Ender
Parkes, Andrew J.
author_facet Asta, Shahriar
Özcan, Ender
Parkes, Andrew J.
author_sort Asta, Shahriar
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The online bin packing problem is a well-known bin packing variant which requires immediate decisions to be made for the placement of a lengthy sequence of arriving items of various sizes one at a time into fixed capacity bins without any overflow. The overall goal is maximising the average bin fullness. We investigate a ‘policy matrix’ representation which assigns a score for each decision option independently and the option with the highest value is chosen for one dimensional online bin packing. A policy matrix might also be considered as a heuristic with many parameters, where each parameter value is a score. We hence investigate a framework which can be used for creating heuristics via many parameters. The proposed framework combines a Genetic Algorithm optimiser, which searches the space of heuristics in policy matrix form, and an online bin packing simulator, which acts as the evaluation function. The empirical results indicate the success of the proposed approach, providing the best solutions for almost all item sequence generators used during the experiments. We also present a novel fitness landscape analysis on the search space of policies. This study hence gives evidence of the potential for automated discovery by intelligent systems of powerful heuristics for online problems; reducing the need for expensive use of human expertise.
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spelling nottingham-346102020-05-04T18:19:10Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34610/ CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing Asta, Shahriar Özcan, Ender Parkes, Andrew J. The online bin packing problem is a well-known bin packing variant which requires immediate decisions to be made for the placement of a lengthy sequence of arriving items of various sizes one at a time into fixed capacity bins without any overflow. The overall goal is maximising the average bin fullness. We investigate a ‘policy matrix’ representation which assigns a score for each decision option independently and the option with the highest value is chosen for one dimensional online bin packing. A policy matrix might also be considered as a heuristic with many parameters, where each parameter value is a score. We hence investigate a framework which can be used for creating heuristics via many parameters. The proposed framework combines a Genetic Algorithm optimiser, which searches the space of heuristics in policy matrix form, and an online bin packing simulator, which acts as the evaluation function. The empirical results indicate the success of the proposed approach, providing the best solutions for almost all item sequence generators used during the experiments. We also present a novel fitness landscape analysis on the search space of policies. This study hence gives evidence of the potential for automated discovery by intelligent systems of powerful heuristics for online problems; reducing the need for expensive use of human expertise. Elsevier 2016-11-30 Article PeerReviewed Asta, Shahriar, Özcan, Ender and Parkes, Andrew J. (2016) CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing. Expert Systems with Applications, 63 . pp. 208-221. ISSN 0957-4174 Genetic algorithms heuristics packing decision support systems learning systems noisy optimization http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417416303499 doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2016.07.005 doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2016.07.005
spellingShingle Genetic algorithms
heuristics
packing
decision support systems
learning systems
noisy optimization
Asta, Shahriar
Özcan, Ender
Parkes, Andrew J.
CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title_full CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title_fullStr CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title_full_unstemmed CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title_short CHAMP: Creating Heuristics via Many Parameters for online bin packing
title_sort champ: creating heuristics via many parameters for online bin packing
topic Genetic algorithms
heuristics
packing
decision support systems
learning systems
noisy optimization
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34610/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34610/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34610/