Information processing apparatus, recording medium, information processing method, and information processing system

A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium having stored a program causing a computer to perform a process comprising:

• acquiring, for a combinatorial optimization problem for acquiring a plurality of routes to be used by a traveling entity to visit a plurality of spot nodes and having a depot node as a starting point and end point of each of the routes, a maximum number of spot nodes to be allocated to one route,
• determining the number of state variables to be used for formulating the combinatorial optimization problem based on the maximum number,
• generating, for the determined number of state variables, information on an objective function including a constraint term indicating that, after the traveling entity travels from the spot node to the depot node in each of the routes, traveling of the traveling entity to each of the plurality of spot nodes within the route is limited;
• and
• outputting the generated information on the objective function to a searching apparatus searching a ground state indicated by a set of the state variables included in the objective function.

An information processing system comprising:

• an information processing apparatus and a searching apparatus, wherein
• the information processing apparatus including:
• a memory and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to:
• acquire, for a combinatorial optimization problem for acquiring a plurality of routes to be used by a traveling entity to visit a plurality of spot nodes and having a depot node as a starting point and end point of each of the routes, a maximum number of spot nodes to be allocated to one route,
• determine the number of state variables to be used for formulating the combinatorial optimization problem based on the maximum number,
• generate, for the determined number of state variables, information on an objective function including a constraint term indicating that, after the traveling entity travels from the spot node to the depot node in each of the routes, traveling of the traveling entity to each of the plurality of spot nodes within the route is limited;
• and
• output the generated information on the objective function,
• and
• the searching apparatus is configured to search a ground state indicated by a set of the state variables included in the objective function received from the information processing apparatus.