Related Problems and Applications

Abstract

For several practical problems it is immediately seen that the TSP provides the suitable optimization model. In many cases, however, this is either not straightforward or the pure TSP has to be augmented by further constraints. In this chapter we first discuss some optimization problems that are related to the TSP. Some of them can be transformed to a pure TSP in a reasonable way, others are at least related in the sense that algorithms developed for the TSP can be adapted to their solution. Then we survey some application areas where the TSP or its relatives can be used to treat practical problems. Further aspects are found in Garfinkel (1985). Finally, we introduce the collection of sample problem instances that we will use in the sequel for testing algorithms.