Automated Heuristic Design

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Overview

Automated heuristic design studies how to create efficient rules that guide search and decision-making in problems such as vehicle routing, job scheduling, classical planning, and hardware design. Common approaches use genetic programming, evolutionary search, learned policies, or large language models to generate and refine executable heuristics using solver or simulator feedback. Current work increasingly combines these methods with memory, diverse heuristic portfolios, instance specialization, and transfer across tasks, while evaluating solution quality, runtime, and performance on held-out cases. A central challenge is balancing flexible search with reliable generalization, affordable evaluation, and guarantees such as execution safety or admissibility.

Latest papers

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84 papers15 papers in the last four weeks, up 200% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. TransGP: Task-Conditioned Transformer-Guided Genetic Programming for Multitask Dynamic Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

    Apr 4, 2026Meng Xu, Jiao Liu, Hua Yu +1Job Shop SchedulingAutomated Heuristic Design

  2. Breaking Validity-Induced Boundaries to Expand Algorithm Search Space: A Two-Stage AST-Based Operator for LLM-Driven Automated Heuristic Evolution

    Apr 3, 2026Sun Shengming, Shi JialongAutomated Heuristic DesignLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

  3. Transferable knowledge graphs with executable learned operators for algorithm design

    Mar 30, 2026Camilo Chacón Sartori, José H. García, Andrei Voicu Tomut +1Knowledge GraphsAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), CSIC and BIST, Campus UAB, Bellaterra, 08193, Barcelona, Spain · Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Bellaterra, Spain

  4. DSevolve: Enabling Real-Time Adaptive Scheduling on Dynamic Flexible Job Shop with LLM-Evolved Heuristic Portfolios

    Mar 29, 2026XinLei Zhou, Jin Huang, Jie Yang +2Flexible Job Shop SchedulingReal-Time Scheduling

    School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, PR China

  5. The DeepXube Software Package for Solving Pathfinding Problems with Learned Heuristic Functions and Search

    Mar 25, 2026Forest AgostinelliAutomated Heuristic DesignGraph-Based Planning

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of South Carolina

  6. Large Neighborhood Search meets Iterative Neural Constraint Heuristics

    Mar 21, 2026Yudong W. Xu, Wenhao Li, Scott Sanner +1Constraint SatisfactionLarge Neighborhood Search

    Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto · Vector Institute

  7. From Language Models to Control Policies: Search, Selection, and Verification

    Mar 20, 2026Nima H. Siboni, Seyedreza Kiamousavi, Vahid Rostami +1Automated Heuristic DesignLLM-Based Program Synthesis

    Juna.ai, Kastanienallee 32, 10435 Berlin · Institute of Metal Forming, RWTH Aachen, Intzestr. 10, 52072 Aachen

  8. Evolutionary Transfer Learning for Dragonchess

    Mar 16, 2026Jim O'Connor, Annika Hoag, Sarah Goyette +1Game-Playing AgentsTransfer Learning

    Computer Science Department, Connecticut College, New London, United States

  9. Planning as Goal Recognition: Deriving Heuristics from Intention Models -- Extended Version

    Mar 16, 2026Giacomo Rosa, Jean Honorio, Nir Lipovetzky +1Symbolic PlanningAutomated Heuristic Design

    The University of Melbourne · RMIT University

  10. Efficient Policy Learning with Hybrid Evaluation-Based Genetic Programming for Uncertain Agile Earth Observation Satellite Scheduling

    Mar 9, 2026Junhua Xue, Yuning Chen, Mingyan Shao +3Genetic ProgrammingAutomated Heuristic Design

  11. Advancing Automated Algorithm Design via Evolutionary Stagewise Design with LLMs

    Mar 9, 2026Chen Lu, Ke Xue, Chengrui Gao +5Automated Algorithm DiscoveryAutomated Heuristic Design

    National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China · Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab, China

  12. CDEoH: Category-Driven Automatic Algorithm Design With Large Language Models

    Mar 8, 2026Yu-Nian Wang, Shen-Huan Lyu, Ning Chen +3Automated Heuristic DesignAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Key Laboratory of Water Big Data Technology of Ministry of Water Resources, College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, China · Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China · State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

  13. DyACE: Dynamic Algorithm Co-evolution for Online Automated Heuristic Design with Large Language Model

    Mar 7, 2026Guidong Lu, Yiping Liu, Xiangxiang ZengAutomated Heuristic DesignCombinatorial Optimization

  14. Large Language Model-Driven Full-Component Evolution of Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search

    Mar 7, 2026Shaohua Yu, Tianyu Chen, Linyan Liu +1Automated Heuristic DesignLarge Neighborhood Search

    School of Intelligent Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · Université Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec, Laboratoire Génie Industriel, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France +1

  15. Twitch: Learning Abstractions for Equational Theorem Proving

    Mar 6, 2026Guy Axelrod, Moa Johansson, Nicholas SmallboneAutomated Theorem ProvingAutomated Heuristic Design

    Chalmers University, of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden · University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

  16. LUMINA: LLM-Guided GPU Architecture Exploration via Bottleneck Analysis

    Mar 6, 2026Tao Zhang, Rui Ma, Shuotao Xu +2Automated Heuristic DesignLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    Microsoft Research China

  17. ReVEL: Multi-Turn Reflective LLM-Guided Heuristic Evolution via Structured Performance Feedback

    Mar 5, 2026Cuong Van Duc, Minh Nguyen Dinh Tuan, Tam Vu Duc +4Automated Heuristic DesignLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    VinMotion · Hanoi University of Science and Technology · VinUniversity +2

  18. From Heuristic Selection to Automated Algorithm Design: LLMs Benefit from Strong Priors

    Mar 3, 2026Qi Huang, Furong Ye, Ananta Shahane +2Large Language Model-Guided OptimizationAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University, 2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands

  19. Enhancing CVRP Solver through LLM-driven Automatic Heuristic Design

    Feb 26, 2026Zhuoliang Xie, Fei Liu, Zhenkun Wang +1Vehicle RoutingAutomated Heuristic Design

    Southern University of Science and Technology · City University of Hong Kong

  20. Survey on Neural Routing Solvers

    Feb 25, 2026Yunpeng Ba, Xi Lin, Changliang Zhou +7Neural Combinatorial OptimizationVehicle Routing

    Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fully Actuated System Control Theory and Technology, School of Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. · the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China. · the Institute of Big Data Science and Industry, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China. +1

  21. Heuristic Search as Language-Guided Program Optimization

    Feb 17, 2026Mingxin Yu, Ruixiao Yang, Chuchu FanAutomated Heuristic DesignLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

  22. Vulcan: Instance-specialized, Verifiable Systems Heuristics Through LLM-driven Search

    Dec 31, 2025Rohit Dwivedula, Divyanshu Saxena, Sujay Yadalam +3Automated Heuristic DesignLLM-Based Program Synthesis

    The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, USA

  23. VRPAgent: LLM-Driven Discovery of Heuristic Operators for Vehicle Routing Problems

    Oct 8, 2025André Hottung, Federico Berto, Chuanbo Hua +9Vehicle RoutingAutomated Heuristic Design

    Bielefeld University · Radical Numerics · KAIST +6

  24. Successor-Generator Planning with LLM-generated Heuristics

    Jan 30, 2025Alexander Tuisov, Yonatan Vernik, Alexander ShleyfmanAutomated Heuristic DesignLLM Planning

    Independent Researcher · Computer Science Department, Bar-Ilan University