Preference-Driven Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization with Conditional Computation

Recent deep reinforcement learning methods have achieved remarkable success in solving multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems (MOCOPs) by decomposing them into multiple subproblems, each associated with a specific weight vector. However, these methods typically treat all subproblems equally and solve them using a single model, hindering the effective exploration of the solution space and thus leading to suboptimal performance. To overcome the limitation, we propose POCCO, a novel plug-and-play framework that enables adaptive selection of model structures for subproblems, which are subsequently optimized based on preference signals rather than explicit reward values. Specifically, we design a conditional computation block that routes subproblems to specialized neural architectures. Moreover, we propose a preference-driven optimization algorithm that learns pairwise preferences between winning and losing solutions. We evaluate the efficacy and versatility of POCCO by applying it to two state-of-the-art neural methods for MOCOPs. Experimental results across four classic MOCOP benchmarks demonstrate its significant superiority and strong generalization.

@article{fan2025_2506.08898,
  title={ Preference-Driven Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization with Conditional Computation },
  author={ Mingfeng Fan and Jianan Zhou and Yifeng Zhang and Yaoxin Wu and Jinbiao Chen and Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08898},
  year={ 2025 }
}