Definition
The traveling salesman problem is the task of determining an optimal path through several points and return to the starting point.
Introduction
“Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city once and returns to the origin city?” The traveling salesman (or salesperson) problem (TSP) is a well-known mathematical problem that was first defined in the 1800s and studied in the 1930s. The task is to connect each of several points (nodes) and return to the origin using the shortest possible path (tour) (see examples in Fig. 1).
Hypothetical examples of solutions to traveling salesman problems (TSPs) in a randomly generated array of seven nodes. (a) Shortest possible tour, (b) random tour, and (c) tour resulting from the nearest neighbor strategy in a closed TSP starting and ending at A. (d) Shortest possible tour in an open TSP starting at A and ending at B
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References
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Lihoreau, M., Gómez-Moracho, T., Pasquaretta, C. (2017). Traveling Salesman. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1821-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1821-1
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