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A new grouping genetic algorithm approach to the multiple traveling salesperson problem

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Abstract

The multiple traveling salesperson problem (MTSP) is an extension of the well known traveling salesperson problem (TSP). Given m > 1 salespersons and n > m cities to visit, the MTSP seeks a partition of cities into m groups as well as an ordering among cities in each group so that each group of cities is visited by exactly one salesperson in their specified order in such a way that each city is visited exactly once and sum of total distance traveled by all the salespersons is minimized. Apart from the objective of minimizing the total distance traveled by all the salespersons, we have also considered an alternate objective of minimizing the maximum distance traveled by any one salesperson, which is related with balancing the workload among salespersons. In this paper, we have proposed a new grouping genetic algorithm based approach for the MTSP and compared our results with other approaches available in the literature. Our approach outperformed the other approaches on both the objectives.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 500046, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Alok Singh

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication, Banasthali Vidyapith Jaipur Campus, Sarojini Marg, Jaipur, 302001, Rajasthan, India

    Anurag Singh Baghel

Authors
  1. Alok Singh
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  2. Anurag Singh Baghel
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Correspondence to Alok Singh.

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Singh, A., Baghel, A.S. A new grouping genetic algorithm approach to the multiple traveling salesperson problem. Soft Comput 13, 95–101 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-008-0312-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-008-0312-1

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