Genetic Local Search for the TSP: New Results

The combination of local search heuristics and genetic algorithms has been shown to be an effective approach for finding near-optimum solutions to the traveling salesman problem. In this paper, previously proposed genetic local search algorithms for the symmetric and asymmetric traveling salesman problem are revisited and potential improvements are identified. Since local search is the central component in which most of the computation time is spent, improving the efficiency of the local search operators is crucial for improving the overall performance of the algorithms. The modifications of the algorithms are described and the new results obtained are presented. The results indicate that the improved algorithms are able to arrive at better solutions in significantly less time. I. Introduction Consider a salesman who wants to start from his home city, visit each of a set of n cities exactly once, and then return home. Since the salesman is interested in finding the shortest possible r..