The Journal of Engineering (Mar 2024)
Automatic constraint programming solver selection method based on machine learning for the cable tree wiring problem
Abstract
Abstract Cable trees are primarily employed in industrial products to facilitate energy transfer and information exchange among various components. When utilizing machines for assembly, it is essential to convert the wiring plan into a sequence of cable insertion operations executed by the machine under various constraints. This poses a combinatorial optimization problem. In this domain, constraint programming (CP) solvers often exhibit outstanding performance by leveraging their robust problem‐modelling capabilities, excellent scalability, and precise solving capabilities. However, CP solvers may achieve various performances for different problem instances. Selecting the most suitable CP solver for each problem instance is crucial. This paper introduces an automatic selection algorithm for CP solvers to solve the cable tree wiring problem (CTW). Firstly, a scoring system is used to conduct an in‐depth analysis and compare four well‐known CP solvers: CPLEX, Chuffed, OR‐Tools, and Gurobi. The results indicate that OR‐Tools and CPLEX outperform other solvers in performance. Moreover, these two solvers exhibit complementary advantages in quickly finding optimal and feasible solutions within specified time limits. Therefore, CP and machine learning are ingeniously integrated, harnessing their complementary advantages. 4240 instances covering various scenarios are randomly generated to form the problem space. This method incorporates decision trees, random forests, K‐nearest neighbours, and naive Bayes, utilizing these four machine learning techniques. The proposed method can achieve better results than traditional single CP solvers. Among all the evaluated machining learning techniques, the automatic solver selection methods based on decision trees and random forests can achieve accuracy rates of 91.29% and 84.15%, respectively.
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