A hybrid algorithm applied to travelling salesman problem

In this paper, a hybrid algorithm is proposed for travelling salesman problem (TSP). TSP, one of the vehicle route planning problems, is to minimize the cost of travel of a salesman in visiting all the cities in a given set, and return to the starting city. Basically, the proposed algorithm combines ant colony optimization (ACO) with genetic algorithm (GA) and can explore and exploit search spaces. It has both the advantage of ACO, the ability to find feasible solutions and to avoid premature convergence, and that of GA, the ability to avoid being trapped in local optima. The test results show that proposed algorithm finds optimum solutions effectively.