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URS: A Unified Neural Routing Solver for Cross-Problem Zero-Shot Generalization

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Multi-task neural routing solvers have emerged as a promising paradigm for their ability to solve multiple vehicle routing problems (VRPs) using a single model. However, existing neural solvers typically rely on predefined problem constraints or require per-problem fine-tuning, which substantially limits their zero-shot generalization ability to unseen VRP variants. To address this critical bottleneck, we propose URS, a unified neural routing solver that achieves zero-shot generalization across a wide range of unseen VRPs with a single model. We propose a unified data representation (UDR) that replaces problem enumeration with data unification, thereby broadening the problem coverage and reducing reliance on domain expertise. In addition, we introduce a Mixed Bias Module (MBM) during encoding to improve node embeddings, which efficiently captures multiple priors inherent to various problems. On top of the UDR, we develop a problem-conditioned parameter generator to further improve zero-shot generalization. Extensive experiments show that URS consistently produces high-quality solutions for 110 VRP variants (including 99 unseen variants) while demonstrating impressive scalability to large-scale instances with up to 7000 nodes. To the best of our knowledge, URS is the first neural solver to handle over 100 VRP variants with a single model. Our code is available at https://github.com/CIAM-Group/URS.

Changliang Zhou, Canhong Yu, Shunyu Yao, Xi Lin, Zhenkun Wang, Yu Zhou, Qingfu Zhang• 2025

Related benchmarks

TaskDatasetResultRank
Traveling Salesman ProblemTSP100
Optimality Gap (%)0.08
37
Capacitated Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRP 100
Optimality Gap (%)1.63
36
Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Time WindowsCVRPTW100 1,000 instances
Optimality Gap3.22
18
Capacitated Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRPLIB Set-XXL (test)
Gap (Leuven1, N=3000)11.57
15
Vehicle Routing Problem solvingCVRPLib Set-AGS Set-XXL
Gap (%) Leuven1 (N=3000)11.5
12
Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRPB n=100
Time (minutes)7
11
Vehicle Routing ProblemMDOCVRPBP 1K instances N=100 (test)
Optimality Gap24.22
10
Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRPBPLTW
Symmetric Gap9.18
10
Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRPLIB Set-X and Set-XXL (ALL)
Solved Instances Count34
9
Capacitated Vehicle Routing ProblemCVRPLIB Set-X 32 (N ∈ [500, 1000])
Optimality Gap8.678
9
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