# A Benchmark Study of Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for the Container Stowage Planning Problem

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02589 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02589/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RL for robot navigation and UAV control, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 13 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2025.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for robot navigation and UAV control](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-robot-navigation-and-uav-control/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Trust Region Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.05477/) (2015)
- [Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01783/) (2016)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning that Matters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06560/) (2017)
- [Distributional Reinforcement Learning with Quantile Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10044/) (2017)
- [Sim-to-Real Transfer in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13303/) (2020)
- [PettingZoo: Gym for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14471/) (2020)
- [A Closer Look at Invalid Action Masking in Policy Gradient Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14171/) (2020)
- [A Survey of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Dynamically Varying Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10619/) (2020)
- [Learning to Locomote: Understanding How Environment Design Matters for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04304/) (2020)
- [Literature Survey on the Container Stowage Planning Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07573/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Container stowage planning (CSPP) is a critical component of maritime transportation and terminal operations, directly affecting supply chain efficiency. Owing to its complexity, CSPP has traditionally relied on human expertise. While reinforcement learning (RL) has recently been applied to CSPP, systematic benchmark comparisons across different algorithms remain limited. To address this gap, we develop a Gym environment that captures the fundamental features of CSPP and extend it to include crane scheduling in both multi-agent and single-agent formulations. Within this framework, we evaluate five RL algorithms: DQN, QR-DQN, A2C, PPO, and TRPO under multiple scenarios of varying complexity. The results reveal distinct performance gaps with increasing complexity, underscoring the importance of algorithm choice and problem formulation for CSPP. Overall, this paper benchmarks multiple RL methods for CSPP while providing a reusable Gym environment with crane scheduling, thus offering a foundation for future research and practical deployment in maritime logistics.