A Comprehensive Survey on the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem: Applications, Approaches and Taxonomy

The Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem (MTSP) is among the most interesting combinatorial optimization problems because it is widely adopted in real-life applications, including robotics, transportation, networking, etc.Although the importance of this optimization problem, there is no survey dedicated to reviewing recent MTSP contributions. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive review of existing studies on MTSP. In this survey, we focus on MTSP’s recent contributions to both classical vehicles/robots and unmanned aerial vehicles. We highlight the approaches applied to solve the MTSP as well as its application domains. We analyze the MTSP variants and propose a taxonomy and a classification of recent studies.

A Comprehensive Survey on the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem: Applications, Approaches and Taxonomy

The Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem (MTSP) is among the most interesting combinatorial optimization problems because it is widely adopted in real-life applications, including robotics, transportation, networking, etc.Although the importance of this optimization problem, there is no survey dedicated to reviewing recent MTSP contributions. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive review of existing studies on MTSP. In this survey, we focus on MTSP’s recent contributions to both classical vehicles/robots and unmanned aerial vehicles. We highlight the approaches applied to solve the MTSP as well as its application domains. We analyze the MTSP variants and propose a taxonomy and a classification of recent studies.

An efficient genetic algorithm for solving open multiple travelling salesman problem with load balancing constraint

The multiple travelling salesman problem (MTSP) is one of the widely studied combinatorial optimization problems with various theoretical and practical applications. However, most of the studies intended to deal with classical MTSP, very limited attention has been given to an open multiple travelling salesman problem and its variants. In this paper, an open multiple travelling salesman problem with load balancing constraint (OMTSPLB) is addressed. The OMTSPLB differs from the conventional MTSP, in which all the salesmen start from the central depot and need not come back to it after visiting the given number of cities by accomplishing the load balance constraint, which helps in fairly distributing the task among all salesmen. The problem aims to minimize the overall traversal distance/cost for operating open tours subject to the load balancing constraint. A zero-one integer linear programming (0-1 ILP) model and an efficient metaheuristic genetic algorithm (GA), is established for the OMTSPLB. Since no existing study on OMTSPLB, the proposed GA is tested on the relaxed version of the present model, comparative results are reported. The comparative results show that the proposed GA is competent over the existing algorithms. Furthermore, extensive experiments are carried out on OMTSPLB and the results show that proposed GA can find the global solution effectively.

Experimental Study of a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem

The multiple travelling salesman problem (MTSP), an extension of the well-known travelling salesman problem (TSP), is studied here. In MTSP, starting from a depot, multiple salesmen require to visit all cities so that each city is required to be visited only once by one salesman only. It is NP-hard and is more complex than the usual TSP. So, exact optimal solutions can be obtained for smaller sized problem instances only. For large-sized problem instances, it is essential to apply heuristic algorithms, and amongst them, genetic algorithm is identified to be successfully deal with such complex optimization problems. So, we propose a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) that uses sequential constructive crossover, a local search approach along with an immigration technique to find high-quality solution to the MTSP. Then our proposed HGA is compared against some state-of-the-art algorithms by solving some TSPLIB symmetric instances of several sizes with various number of salesmen. Our experimental investigation demonstrates that the HGA is one of the best algorithms.

Using genetic algorithm to solve multiple traveling salesman problem and considering Carbon emissions

Objectives: The Multiple Travelling Salesman problem is a complex combinatorial optimization problem which is a variance of the Traveling Salesman Problem,where a lot of salesmen are utilized in the solution. In this work a cold chain logistics and route optimization model with minimum transport cost, carbon cost and Refrigeration cost are constructed. Methods: A genetic algorithm is then proposed to solve for the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem with time windows while transport cost, carbon emission cost and refrigeration cost is minimized. Findings: It was observed that the algorithm evolved towards the direction of the optimal value of the fitness function. Novelty: There are a number of studies that considered tournament selection strategy but just a few have applied genetic algorithm considering insertion method to solve a Multiple Travelling salesman Problem. This study uses insertion method to obtain optimal solution. Also, the researcher considered time windows, transport cost, carbon emission cost and refrigeration cost. Keywords: Genetic algorithm method; cold-logistics; multiple travelling salesman problem