[mlpack] [GSoC] Asking About the Feasibility of an Idea in RL

[Ahmed Maher]

Dear all,

         I hope you all are having a good day. I am a computer engineering
student at Cairo University, Egypt currently in my last year.

         I want to ask the maintainers of mlpack about how interested are
they in the idea of adding pointer networks to the code base. I find it a
good idea because pointer networks trained using deep RL algorithms have
proven to be really good at solving combinatorial optimization problems
like TSP and even on par with tools like Google OR-Tools in VRP while being
end-to-end! Since mlpack monopolizes on speed, I think it would be good to
have a foundation for expanding in this direction adding maybe MCTS later
on which will make mlpack a necessity for people wanting to solve
combinatorial problems as speed could be a deal breaker for other tools.

         What are your thoughts on that? I attached the papers I have read
about this topic for reference. Kindly find them below. Thanks.

Pointer Networks <https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03134>
Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09940>
Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04240>

Best Regards,
-- 
Ahmed Maher AlAmir
Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
Giza, Egypt
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