Online Time-Windows TSP with Predictions

In the Time-Windows TSP (TW-TSP) we are given requests at different locations on a network; each request is endowed with a reward and an interval of time; the goal is to find a tour that visits as much reward as possible during the corresponding time window. For the online version of this problem, where each request is revealed at the start of its time window, no finite competitive ratio can be obtained. We consider a version of the problem where the algorithm is presented with predictions of where and when the online requests will appear, without any knowledge of the quality of this side information. Vehicle routing problems such as the TW-TSP can be very sensitive to errors or changes in the input due to the hard time-window constraints, and it is unclear whether imperfect predictions can be used to obtain a finite competitive ratio. We show that good performance can be achieved by explicitly building slack into the solution. Our main result is an online algorithm that achieves a competitive ratio logarithmic in the diameter of the underlying network, matching the performance of the best offline algorithm to within factors that depend on the quality of the provided predictions. The competitive ratio degrades smoothly as a function of the quality and we show that this dependence is tight within constant factors.