Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580

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Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

A comparative study of improved GA and PSO in solving multiple

traveling salesmen problem
Honglu Zhou a , Mingli Song a,∗ , Witold Pedrycz b,c,d
a
School of Computer Science, Communication University of China, Beijing, China
b
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6R 2V4, Canada
c
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
d
Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Multiple traveling salesman problem (MTSP) is a generalization of the classic traveling salesman prob-
Received 10 September 2016 lem (TSP). Compared to TSP, MTSP is more common in real-life applications. In this paper, in order to
Received in revised form solve the minsum MTSP with multiple depots, closed path, and the requirement of minimum number
20 December 2017
of cities each salesman should visit, we propose two partheno genetic algorithms (PGA). One is a PGA
Accepted 21 December 2017
with roulette selection and elitist selection in which four new kinds of mutation operation are proposed.
Available online 27 December 2017
The other one, named IPGA, binds the selection and mutation together. A new selection operator and a
more comprehensive mutation operator are used. The new mutation operator is based on the four kinds
Keywords:
Partheno genetic algorithm
of mutation operation in PGA, which eliminates the mutation probability. For comparative analysis, we
Multiple traveling salesman problem also adopt particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) and one state of the art method (invasive weed
Particle swarm optimization optimization algorithm from literature) to solve MTSP. The algorithms are validated with publicly avail-
able TSPLIB benchmarks. The performance is discussed and evaluated through a series of comparative
experiments. IPGA is demonstrated to be superior in solving MTSP.
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction MTSP considered here is the symmetric minsum MTSP with

Traveling salesman problem is a classic NP-Complete problem
encountered in combinatorial optimization [1]. The objective is to
find the salesman’s route with the minimum cost, under the condi-
tion that this salesman visit all given locations only once, and at the
end, return to the starting location. Many real-world problems can
be modeled as TSP after transformation, such as route planning,
production scheduling, network communication, et al. [49–54].
However, classic TSP does not conform to certain circumstances.
For instance, suppose that a company has multiple salesmen living
in different cities, and the company hopes that they visit cities in the
number of not less than a certain amount as to meet their minimum
wage. Therefore, to address this problem, a multiple traveling sales-
man problem was introduced [62]. By changing the single salesman
condition into a problem involving several salesmen, MTSP adds
some additional conditions to satisfy more realistic requirements
[4]. In this sense, the MTSP is more suitable for real-life applications.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hlzhou@cuc.edu.cn (H. Zhou), songmingli@cuc.edu.cn
(M. Song), wpedrycz@ualberta.ca (W. Pedrycz).
multiple depots and closed paths. The restriction of a minimum
number of cities is added. MTSP with the objective of minsum is a
problem that minimizing the sum of the lengths of all tours for mul-
tiple salesmen. In this case, each intermediate city is visited exactly
once. MTSP can be generalized in many different ways [62]. It has
two categories: the single depot case and the multiple depots case.
In the single depot case, all salesmen start and end in the same city.
In the multiple depots case, the routes can be either closed paths
or open paths. If the routes are closed paths, the salesmen have dif-
ferent origin cities and return to their origin cities after completing
the tours. If the routes are open paths, the salesmen have different
origin cities and they do not go back to their origin cities at the end
of their tours. We investigate the MTSP with multiple depots and
closed paths. Thus all salesmen start their routes in different cities,
and end their routes in their own origin cities. Apart from that, the
minimum number of cities that each salesman must go through is
also a required restriction. Each salesman has to visit a minimum
number of cities.
The MTSP we considered can be concisely described as follows:
Give an undirected graph G = (V, A), which is an ordered pair
G = (V, A) comprising a set V of vertices, together with a set A of arcs.
The undirected graph G has nonnegative costs associated with its

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2017.12.031
1568-4946/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
arcs. Let n represent the total number of salesmen. The objective
 n
function is to partition V into n nonempty subsets Si , and find
i=1
a minimum cost circuit passing through each vertex of each subset
Si exactly once.
The MTSP objective function is as follows:
 
i −1
Minimize ni=1 xi i + m
j=1
i
xj,j+1
m ,1
The first sum represents cycling through the n salesmen. The second
sum represents cycling through the total cities that the ith salesman
has visited (the index of the first city that the ith salesman has
i TSP. We design new PSO formulas for the MTSP by defining three
visited is 1, and the last city index is mi ). xj,j+1 indicates the distance
between city j and the next city that the ith salesman visited. xi
mi ,1
indicates the distance between the last city mi and the first city
i
that the ith salesman visited. xj,j+1 i
is equal to xj+1,j . The value of mi
should not be less than the specified minimum number of cities for
n parative experiments. We not only analyze the performance and
each salesman.  mi equals to the total number of cities (cycling
i=1
through the nth salesmen).
Genetic algorithm (GA) is an evolutionary algorithm which fol-
lows the principles of the selection of the fittest [5,6]. Since GA has
been introduced, it has been widely used, especially in the field
of pattern recognition, image processing, machine learning, neu-
ral networks, adaptive control, artificial life, function optimization
and production scheduling [7–14]. Particle swarm optimization
algorithm is a popular swarm inspired method present in computa-
tional intelligence. It is a population based stochastic optimization
technique [20,21,40]. Its underlying idea is to find the optimal
solution through information sharing and individual collabora-
tion. PSO has been widely used in network traffic management,
distributed control of collective robotics, function optimization,
neural network training, fuzzy system control, intrusion activities
detection, granular computing and decision-making scheduling
[22–27,59,60].
This paper aims to use the improved GA and PSO methods to
solve the symmetric minsum MTSP with multiple depots, closed
paths (with a minimum city number restriction). Sequence encod-
ing method is the most suitable method and is often used to solve
MTSP. However, this causes problems encountered in both the tra-
ditional GA and the standard PSO. Hence, we choose PGA instead
of classic GA [34,35]. It uses roulette selection and elitist selection,
and has special mutation operators. Considering some drawbacks
of PGA, an improved PGA namely IPGA, is proposed. It optimizes the
genetic operation of PGA and further improves the search abilities,
avoiding the shortcomings associated with parameter setting and
making the original algorithm more efficient and stable. We also
adopt the PSO algorithm to solve MTSP and carry out a compara-
tive analysis [44]. To compare our methods with other state-of-art
approaches, we implement the invasive weed optimization algo-
rithm (IWO) with local search [79]. The experimental studies show
that our results are much better than results obtained by IWO.
The originality of this study is as follows. First, we investigate
the multiple depots and closed paths MTSP with a minimum city
number. The complexity of the MTSP is higher than the TSP. How-
ever, the research effort on MTSP is limited while there is a great
amount of literature for solving TSP. On the one hand, compared to
the well-known TSP, the research on MTSP is quite limited. On the
other hand, the MTSP has many variations in which there are few
studies on the type of MTSP we considered. To our knowledge so
far, there has been no specific method proposed for our researched
problem. We report our test results using the TSPLIB benchmark for
future references in the experimental studies (see Section 6.1). Sec-
ond, we propose two partheno genetic algorithms (PGA and IPGA).
In particular, we introduce four new kinds of mutation operation,
565
i.e., FlipInsert, SwapInsert, LSlideInsert and RSlideInsert. Based on
these mutation operations, the IPGA binds the selection and muta-
tion together and eliminates the mutation probability. By doing
so, the easily-occurring phenomena of premature convergence and
poor convergence ability are effectively prevented. Third, we adopt
PSO method to solve MTSP. PSO is a relatively new evolutionary
algorithm. It is able to solve complex problems, which has sim-
(1) ple principle and implementation process. Recently PSO has been
successfully applied to many areas. Several papers on PSO have
stressed their advantages and claimed the superiority of PSO over
GA [45]. However, few studies were reported on using PSO to solve
the MTSP and only a few papers consider using PSO for the classical
new operators. We have a deep experience that PSO is suitable for
solving continuous problems, and GA is superior for solving dis-
crete problems. PSO has the characteristic of high search efficiency
in the earlier state. However, it has a slower convergence rate in the
latter period of searching. Fourth, we put forward a series of com-
efficiency of our three algorithms, compare their computational
results with the benchmark results and other existing method, but
also, we study how the number of salesmen and the number of cities
will affect the solution. It turns out that how to choose a rational
number of salesmen is worth considering.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a literature
review and summarizes the related works on MTSP. Sections 3, 4
and 5 present PGA, IPGA and PSO methods. Section 6 is concerned
with experimental studies. Section 7 summarizes the paper, and
puts forward some ideas for future studies.
2. Related studies
Compared with the well-known TSP, the MTSP is much less stud-
ied and does not receive the same amount of research effort. As
researchers dived into the problem, the MTSP has received more
attention recently. Many efficacious methods have been developed.
An overview of literature and algorithms of MTSP, as well as prob-
lem definition and formulations have been presented in [62–86].
To solve MTSP, Russell presented a heuristic in 1977, which
forms an extension of the highly successful techniques proposed by
Lin and Kernighan [109]. In 1980, Laporte et al. provided an exact
algorithm using integer linear programming [63]. In 1986, Gavish
et al. developed an efficient branch-and-bound based method for
solving the large-scale MTSP [64]. In 1989, Wacholder et al. devel-
oped a neural network algorithm [96]. The model is an extension of
the Hopfield and Tank approach incorporating the Basic Differential
Multipliers Method. Potvin et al. presented a technique that gen-
eralizes the classical k-opt exchange procedure [97]. In 1991, Hsu
et al. proposed a neural network approach which based on the self-
organized feature map model [98]. In 1995, França et al. developed
a tabu search heuristic and two exact search schemes for the min-
max MTSP, in which the objective is to minimize the length of the
longest route [99]. In 1999, Somhom et al. proposed a competition-
based adaptive neural network algorithm for the minmax MTSP
[100]. They evaluated the algorithms by using the standard data of
VRP in TSPLIB without consideration of capacity constraint.
Many new approaches have been established. In 2003, Song
et al. proposed an extended simulated annealing, based on grand
canonical ensemble [101]. In 2004, Bektas did a survey to review
the MTSP and its practical applications, highlighted some formula-
tions, and described exact and heuristic solution procedures [62].
In 2005, Bektas et al. extended the classical MTSP by imposing a
minimal number of cities that a salesman must visit as a side con-
dition (which is an additional restriction we also considered) [65].
They proposed integer linear programming formulations for both
566 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
single depot and multiple depots cases. In the multiple depots case
they considered for experiment, the salesmen do not have to return
to their origin depots but the number of salesmen at each depot
should remain the same at the end as it was in the beginning.
In 2006, Carter et al. proposed a two-part GA chromosome and
related operators to model the MTSP. Their method can dramat-
ically reduce the number of redundant solutions. They considered
two types of MTSP with single depots and closed paths. The first
one is minsum MTSP, in which there are no constraints associated
with the maximum number of cities visits by any one salesman.
The second MTSP minimizes the longest route among the sales-
men [69]. Chandran et al. proposed a clustering approach for the
MTSP with the criterion to balance workloads amongst salesmen
[71]. In 2007, Brown et al. focused on the application of a grouping
GA [73]. They introduced a new chromosome representation for the
MTSP. In 2008, Singh et al. developed a new steady-state grouping
GA (GGA-SS) [74]. They proposed a chromosome representation
scheme with the least possible redundancy. The GGA-SS outper-
formed the approaches presented in [73]. Zhao et al. designed a
pheromone-based crossover operator and used a local search pro-
cedure to act as the mutation operator in a GA [102]. In 2009, Liu
et al. proposed an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm with the
pheromone trail updating, and a local search procedure [103]. Ober-
lin et al. presented a transformation of a heterogeneous multiple
depots MTSP into a single asymmetric TSP, so algorithms available
for the TSP can be used for the MTSP [104].
MTSP has received much more attention in recent years. In 2010,
Király et al. proposed an easily interpretable representation based
GA [76]. Zhou et al. used the greedy strategy to generate the ini-
tial population of GA, and combined the mutation operator with
2-opt local search algorithm [105]. In 2011, Chen et al. studied
the two-part chromosome encoding technique which could solve
the MTSP efficiently, and suggested appropriate genetic operators
[106]. Ghafurian et al. designed an ant system to solve the multi
depots and closed paths MTSP. In their study, the number of cities
that a salesman must visit has a certain range [78]. Actually, the
MTSP they investigated is the most relative problem to our objec-
tive problem, and it is also a problem without existing methods. In
order to examine the accuracy and efficiency of their algorithm, the
results in their experiment were compared to the answers obtained
by solving the same problems by Lingo 8.0 software, which uses
exact methods. In 2012, Sedighpour et al. proposed a modified
hybrid metaheuristic algorithm called GA2OPT [77]. The MTSP is
solved by the modified GA in each iteration at the first stage. At
the second stage, they used the 2-opt local search algorithm to
improve solutions. Yousefikhoshbakht et al. also introduced a two-
phase algorithm [80]. At the first stage, the MTSP is solved by the
sweep algorithm, and at the second stage, the elite ACO and 3-opt
local search are used for improving solutions. In 2013, Yu et al.
put forward a two-level hybrid algorithm [107], in which the top
level is a GA and the bottom level employs branch-and-cut and
Lin-Kernighan algorithms. Yuan et al. proposed a new two-part
chromosome crossover (TCX) [72]. They firstly adopted the exist-
ing two-part chromosome technique in [69], and to overcome its
limits, they proposed TCX. Li et al. presented a new multiple trav-
eling salesman problem, denoted by MTSP* [108]. In MTSP*, cities
are divided into groups, each of which can be exclusively visited
by a predetermined salesman. They designed a GA to solve it, and
designed three pairs of crossover and mutation operators. Wang
et al. proposed a new method based on the knowledge of Graph
Theory to solve a multiple depots and open paths MTSP [82]. Youse-
fikhoshbakht et al. presented a new modified ACO mixed with
insert, swap and 2-opt algorithm [83]. In 2014, Hosseinabadi et al.
presented a new hybrid algorithm, called GELS-GA, through a com-
bination of GA and Gravitational Emulation Local Search (GELS)
algorithms [84]. Cheikhrouhou et al. proposed a new market-based
multi-robot coordination technique, called move and improve, to
the multiple depots MTSP [85]. In each step of the algorithm, a robot
moves and attempts to improve its solution by coordination with its
neighbor robots. Larki et al. presented an evolutionary optimization
algorithm through combining Modified Imperialist Competitive
Algorithm and Lin-Kernigan Algorithm, in which an absorption
function and several local search algorithms are used [86]. In 2015,
Rostami et al. modified the GELS algorithm in [84]. It is based on
the local search concept and uses two main parameters in physics,
velocity and gravity [57]. Venkatesh et al. proposed two meta-
heuristic approaches for the MTSP [79]. The first approach is based
on artificial bee colony algorithm, whereas the second approach is
based on invasive weed optimization algorithm. They also applied a
local search to further improve the solution. Soylu proposed a gen-
eral variable neighborhood search approach [75], and applied the
proposed algorithm for the traffic signalization network in the Kay-
seri province of Turkey. Bolaños et al. considered a multi-objective
MTSP [70]. A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is proposed
by considering the concept of dominance. Sundar et al. presented an
exact algorithm for the heterogeneous multiple depots MTSP [68].
An integer linear programming formulation including two classes
of valid inequalities was proposed. A customized branch-and-cut
algorithm was also developed using the proposed formulation. Nec-
ula et al. investigated three multi-objective ACO based algorithms
and a single-objective ACO algorithm with the minmax objective
for the bi-criteria MTSP [66]. Alves et al. presented the development
of GA to solve MTSP with the objective of reducing both the overall
distance and the difference between the distances travelled by each
salesman [67]. Two approaches were evaluated: A multi-objective
GA and a mono-objective GA. In 2016, Gu et al. studied the problem
of cooperative trajectory planning integrated target assignment for
multiple unmanned combat aerial vehicles, servicing multiple tar-
gets [56]. The problem is formulated as a dynamics-constrained,
multiple depots MTSP with neighborhoods. The solving process
consists of two phases: first the directed graph is constructed and
the original problem is transformed to a standard asymmetric TSP;
then the Lin-Kernighan Heuristic searching algorithm is used.
3. PGA for the MTSP
Practice has demonstrated that GA exhibits promising perfor-
mance while solving TSP and other combinatorial optimization
problems [38,39]. The concept of GA was first proposed by J. D.
Bagley in 1967 [43], and J. Holland began a systematic study on
the mechanism in 1975. Classic GA cannot fully solve the MTSP.
It might generate one meaningless and illegal individual as it vio-
lates the problem requirements. As a result, it becomes necessary to
develop some special crossover operators, such as Partially Mapped
Crossover operator (PMX), Order Crossover operator (OX), Cycle
Crossover operator (CX), et al. [28–33]. The drawbacks are those
special crossover operators are often too cumbersome to imple-
ment, and the gene combination of parent chromosome might be
disrupted during the operation. Therefore, we choose to use PGA
instead of GA. PGA is a special GA without crossover operation. It
not only retains GA’s basic characteristics, but has a simpler genetic
operation. PGA enjoys a higher computational efficiency and does
not require the diversity of the original population. It avoids the
“premature convergence” and “population degradation” to some
extent. Some researchers have questioned the role of the crossover
operator. They believe that crossover operator does not play a sig-
nificant role in the optimization of the population. PGA abolishes
crossover operation, and replaces it with a variety of mutation
operations. The resulting processing of PGA is the same as in the
GA.
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
3.1. Encoding method and initialization
We use the sequence encoding method, which is the most natu-
ral way to express the solution of MTSP. Sequence encoding method
expresses the solution, namely the route, as a sequence of numbers.
Each city is marked with its own unique serial number in advance.
Thus we can order the number according to the salesman’s visit
order. The sequence encoding method is intuitive and reasonable.
It ensures that except for the starting city, every city is visited by
salesman only once.
Using sequence encoding method, we express the actual popu-
lation by route population and breakpoint population. If both route
population and breakpoint population are represented by arrays,
then every row in the array is an individual. Each individual in the
route population is the sequence of cites that all salesmen may have
visited. Each individual in the breakpoint population is the break-
points’ location sequence, which separates its corresponding city
sequence into several parts, and each part is the route assigned for
a salesman. The actual individual in the proposed algorithm con-
sists of the individual in the route population and the corresponding
individual in the breakpoint population. It means that an individual
is represented by two parts. The first part is the route part and the
second part is the breakpoint part.
For example, assume that 3 salesmen have to visit 10 cities; their
routes might look like this:
– Salesman 1 starts from City 7, passes City 4 and City 6, finally
returns to City 7;
– Salesman 2 starts from City 2, passes City 5, City 1 and City 9,
finally returns to City 2;
– Salesman 3 starts from City 3, passes City 10 and City 8, finally
returns to City 3.
As shown in Fig. 1, we can use two breakpoints to divide the
whole city sequence into three parts. The city sequence in the route
population should be like: Route = [7 4 6 2 5 1 9 3 1 0 8]. The break-
points’ location sequence in the breakpoint population should be:
Breaks = [3 7].
Carter and Ragsdale designed a two-part chromosome tech-
nique [69] which is very similar to our encoding method. In their
two-part chromosome technique, the first part of the chromosome
is a permutation of integers from 1 to n, representing the n cities.
The second part of the chromosome is of length m and represents
the number of cities assigned to each of the m salespersons. Fig. 2
illustrates an example of their two-part chromosome representa-
tion for the same 10 city MTSP with 3 salesmen. As shown in Fig. 2,
Salesman 1 visits City 7, 4, and 6 (in that order), Salesman 2 vis-
its City 2, 5, 1, and 9, and Salesman 3 visits City 3, 10, and 8. In
our method, the first part is also a permutation of integers from
1 to n, representing the n cities. However, the second part is not
the same; it represents a breakpoints’ location sequence and sepa-
rates the city permutation into several parts. Each part is the route
assigned for a salesman.
We initialize the population randomly. Suppose we have N
cities, S salesmen, and the minimum number of cities that each
salesman must have travelled equals to M. In this situation, each
individual in the original route population should be a random per-
mutation of integers from 1 to N, representing the N cities. Each
individual in the original breakpoint population is of length S-1.
It is a set of S-1 numbers, among which, each number is different
and randomly chosen from 1 to N. Although the S-1 numbers are
randomly chosen, in order to meet the requirement that each sales-
man must travel not less than M cities, every combination of the
S-1 numbers has to satisfy the following constraints:
567
1. The S-1 numbers should be arranged in increasing order.
2. The difference between every two adjacent numbers should not
be less than M.
3. The first number should not be less than M
4. The difference between N and the last number should not be less
than M
We name the above process of initializing the breakpoints the
Modify Breaks operation. The Modify Breaks operation can satisfy
the minimum number of cities constraint set for each salesman.
3.2. Fitness function
The population is evaluated by the fitness function. In most
cases, the greater the individual’s fitness value indicates that the
individual is more adaptive to the environment. Here, the fitness
value is the reciprocal of the total distance. The smaller total dis-
tance (the greater reciprocal) suggests a better route.
3.3. Selection and mutation
After obtaining the fitness value of each individual in the current
population, we select individuals from the population to carry out
reproduction of the next generation. Individuals with better fitness
values are selected. Those individuals are more likely to be retained
to breed the next generation. The commonly used selection meth-
ods are the fitness ratio method, the ranking selection method, the
league selection method, the crowding model method, etc. We use
the roulette selection and elitist selection [41,42].
The scale of the roulette is the cumulative fitness value of the
individual. The size of every part of the roulette represents the
fitness value of every individual. If the individual has a greater fit-
ness value, then the individual has a bigger area in the roulette.
Rotate the roulette at a random speed. When it stops turning, the
individual that the pointer is pointing to is selected. Obviously, indi-
viduals with greater fitness values are more likely to be selected
than individuals with lower fitness values. However, this selec-
tion mechanism is too random. Relatively good individuals may be
lost during the process. So, we further use elitist selection. Elitist
selection selects the best individual and reserves it to the next gen-
eration. It ensures that the individual with the highest fitness value
will definitely be retained to the next generation. It is an effective
way to enhance the stability of the algorithm and to accelerate the
convergence speed.
Mutation operator randomly chooses some individuals and
directly changes some entries of them. A given route muta-
tion probability and a given breakpoint mutation probability are
required. When mutating the route population, a random number
between 0 and 1 for each individual is generated. If the random
number is less than the route mutation probability, then mutation
will be performed.
Before performing the mutation, firstly, a section, I to J, should
be randomly obtained, meaning that in the route, the segment I to
J will be mutated. Additionally, an insertion position P should be
randomly generated based on I and J.
We define four kinds of route mutation operation: FlipInsert,
SwapInsert, LSlideInsert and RSlideInsert. Which type of the muta-
tion operation will be implemented is selected randomly.
1. FlipInsert: Serial number in segment I to J will be reversed, then
the whole I to J segment will be inserted at the insertion position
P.
2. SwapInsert: Serial number in position I and serial number in
position J will be swapped, then the whole I to J segment will
be inserted at the insertion position P.
568 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
Fig. 1. Example of a solution representation for a 10 city MTSP with 3 salesmen.
Fig. 2. Example of the two-part representation proposed by Carter and Ragsdale.
3. LSlideInsert: Serial number in segment I to J will be cycle shifted
to the left by one position, then the whole I to J segment will be
inserted at the insertion position P.
4. RSlideInsert: Serial number in segment I to J will be cycle shifted
to the right by one position, then the whole I to J segment will
be inserted at the insertion position P.
Similarly, when mutating the breakpoint population, a random
number between 0 and 1 for each individual is generated. If the
random number generated is less than the breakpoint mutation
probability, produce a new set of breakpoints for the individual
using the same method when initializing the breakpoints.
The four kinds of mutation operated in the segment of I to J
ensure that the algorithm exhibits good local search abilities. More-
over, the operation of inserting the whole I to J segment into a
position P, makes sure that the algorithm can enjoy good global
search ability even in the absence of crossover operation. The off-
spring population is able to jump out of local optimum. According
to how the above mutation operations are operated, it can be seen
that such mutation operations avoid the problem of infeasibility
in both of the new route chromosomes and the new breakpoint
chromosomes.
4. IPGA for the MTSP
Owing that the above PGA needs both route mutation probabil-
ity and breakpoint mutation probability, the values have to be set in
advance. However, we usually do not know the optimal value. It is
necessary to set appropriate parameters in GA like mutation prob-
ability. The above PGA depends much on the parameters. However,
even the parameter selection itself is an optimization problem. We
can only get the most appropriate parameter value by a trial-and-
error method. Roulette selection selects individuals too randomly.
Elitist selection can only prevent outstanding individuals from acci-
dentally being eliminated in the process of replication, but still,
good solutions are often ignored. Moreover, random mutation may
cause the genetic characteristics of the chromosome to be easily
damaged. Thus, the number of invalid mutations will gradually
increase. This problem will become more serious when the solu-
tion becomes more optimized. Overall, we are of opinion that the
genetic operation of the above PGA is not good enough and the
search ability is not strong enough. It causes the algorithm trapped
into local optima, coming with relatively poor convergence ability
and encountering premature convergence. It makes the algorithm
unable to improve the quality of the result even if we increase the
number of iterations. Designing better selection or mutation opera-
tors or combining some other good local search algorithm properly
can effectively overcome the problem. Considering this, we pro-
pose an improved PGA, namely IPGA. By improving the selection
operation and mutation operation of the original PGA, IPGA finds
the global optimal solution as soon as possible and maintains the
basis of biological diversity. IPGA improves the overall performance
of PGA. Encoding method and initialization scheme in IPGA are the
same as PGA.
4.1. Fitness function
Due to the fact that IPGA will no longer use the roulette selec-
tion, the fitness value is directly computed as the total distance that
salesmen have travelled. The smaller the total distance is, the better
the fitness of the individual is.
4.2. Algorithm flowchart
The flowchart of the IPGA is shown in Fig. 3.
4.3. Genetic operation of IPGA
The process of genetic operation of IPGA proceeds as follows:
1. Randomly select 10 individuals that have not been selected from
the contemporary population.
2. Find the best individual that has the best fitness in 10 individuals
just selected.
3. Create a temporary population that consists of 10 individuals. All
of the 10 individuals are assigned to the best individual found in
procedure 2.
4. Generate 2 random mutation segment selection points I and J,
and the mutation segment insertion location P.
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
Fig. 3. IPGA processing.
5. Mutate each individual in the temporary population created in
procedure 3 in different ways: do nothing, FlipInsert, SwapInsert,
LSlideInsert, RSlideInsert or Modify Breaks. The specific process
is as follows:
(1) Do nothing to the first individual.
(2) The second individual performs the FlipInsert operation.
(3) The third individual performs the SwapInsert operation.
(4) The fourth individual performs the LSlideInsert operation.
(5) The fifth individual performs the RSlideInsert operation.
(6) The sixth individual performs the Modify Breaks operation
(which is introduced in Section 3.1).
(7) The seventh individual performs the FlipInsert operation
and the Modify Breaks operation.
(8) The eighth individual performs the SwapInsert operation
and the Modify Breaks operation.
(9) The ninth individual performs the LSlideInsert operation
and the Modify Breaks operation.
(10) The tenth individual performs the RSlideInsert operation
and the Modify Breaks operation.
6. Join the temporary population that has already performed muta-
tion operation into new population
7. If all of the individuals in the contemporary population have
been selected, then continue, because it means that a new whole
offspring population has been generated; otherwise go back to
procedure 1.
The genetic operation of IPGA is sound. The mutation operations
in PGA such as FlipInsert, SwapInsert, LSlideInsert and RSlideInsert
are also used in IPGA. Thus IPGA comes with all advantages of PGA.
In addition, the above procedure 5 ensures that the best individual
found in procedure 2 will definitely remain in the offspring popula-
tion. The best individual will be mutated in a few different ways to
produce new individuals. Some of the new individuals are produced
by changing the route of the best individual. Some are produced by
changing the breakpoints of the best individual. Other new indi-
viduals are produced by changing the both. Thus, the mutation
operation comprehensively considers the mutation of both route
sequence and breakpoints sequence. Some potential models are
avoided to be eliminated in the initial search process. Furthermore,
procedure 5 ensures that the algorithm will not ignore second best
solutions in the iterative process. Because the individual that is
selected and used to be mutated to produce offspring is exactly
a relatively good individual. Based on the above-mentioned rea-
569
sons, the global search ability and the local search ability of IPGA
are even more excellent compared to PGA. All in all, it is easier for
IPGA to find the optimal solution. The IPGA has higher efficiency
and better convergence ability.
5. PSO for the MTSP
J. Kennedy and R.C. Eberhart proposed particle swarm optimiza-
tion algorithm in [46]. Their inspiration comes from the study of
social behavior of birds flocking. The theoretical principle of PSO
is to consider each bird in the flock as a particle, and give the par-
ticle memory ability, which can help the particle find the optimal
solution through communication with other particles in the swarm.
Standard PSO algorithm considers each individual as a particle
that has no mass or volume, and extends to the N dimension. The
positions of the particles in the N dimensional space are poten-
tial solutions to the problem. The position of the ith particle in
the N dimensional space is represented by the vector Xi = (Xi1 , Xi2 ,
. . ., Xin ), and the flight speed is expressed as vector Vi = (Vi1 , Vi2 ,
. . ., Vin ). Particle swarm optimization algorithm is an optimization
tool based on iteration. During each iteration, particles update their
speed and position according to the following formulas.
Vi+1 = ω × Vi + c1 × r1 × (pbest − Xi ) + c2 × r2 × (gbest − Xi ) (2)
Xi+1 = Xi + Vi+1 (3)
In the formulas:
Vi : particle velocity after the (i)th iteration.
Vi+1 : particle velocity after the (i + 1)th iteration.
Xi : particle position after the (i)th iteration.
Xi+1 : particle position after the (i + 1)th iteration.
pbest: the best position currently found so far of this particle.
gbest: the best position currently found so far of all the particles
in the entire swarm.
ω: the inertia weight;
c1 c2 : learning factors;
r1 r2 : random numbers that are uniform distribution between
0 and 1.
5.1. Position and velocity
The position of each particle indicates the potential solution of
the searching problem. When using PSO to solve the MTSP, the
570 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
position of each particle indicates one salesmen’s possible route.
The representation of the particle position is exactly the same as
that of the population in PGA. The particle position is composed of
particle route position and particle breakpoint position.
The particle velocity will change the particle position. Particle
velocity and position are produced by the PSO formulas. If we use
the standard PSO formulas, we can never obtain a new position that
conforms to the problem no matter how we represent the veloc-
ity. The reason is because pbest, gbest and Xi are all city sequence
orders. If we directly add or subtract two city sequences, the result is
meaningless. Therefore, it is necessary to modify the standard PSO
formulas to let the particle learn from its current best position and
the current global best position. Moreover, we should represent
the particle velocity appropriately so that the velocity can influ-
ence and change the particle position. Due to the meaning of the
particle breakpoint position, the particle breakpoint position can
be updated by learning from both itself and the current best parti-
cle in the whole swarm without velocity. As a result, we only set up
the velocity for particle route position, namely, the particle route
velocity. The new PSO formulas are as follows:
i+1 i
  i
 and the current best route position in the whole swarm. Also, the
VRoute = ω × VRoute   c1 × r1 × pbestRoute  XRoute 
 i

c2 × r2 × gbestRoute  XRoute 
i+1 i i+1
XRoute = XRoute ⊕ VRoute
i+1
 i
  i
XBreak = r3 × pbestBreak  XBreak   r4 × gbestBreak  XBreak 
In the formulas:
i
VRoute : particle route velocity after the (i)th iteration;
i+1
VRoute : particle route velocity after the (i + 1)th iteration;
i exchange sequence. Suppose we have N cities, the numbers in the
XRoute : particle route position after the (i)th iteration;
i+1
XRoute : particle route position after the (i + 1)th iteration;
pbestRoute: particle’s own best route position currently;
gbestRoute: The best route position of all particles currently;
i 5.3. Infeasibility in PSO
XBreak : particle breakpoint position after the (i)th iteration;
i+1
XBreak : particle breakpoint position after the (i + 1)th iteration;
pbestBreak: particle’s own best breakpoint position currently;
gbestBreak: best breakpoint position of all particles currently;
ω: the inertia weight;
c1 c2 : learning factors;
r1 r2 r3 r4 : random numbers that are uniform distribution
between 0 and 1.
The meaning of newly defined operators is as follows:
⊕:
Exchange sequence operator. S = (i, j) represents an exchange
sequence. Exchange sequence S acts on a city sequence, that is
swapping the serial number in position i and serial number in posi-
tion j in this city sequence. If a city sequence is A = (1,2,3,4), an
exchange sequence is S = (1,2), using ⊕ to represent the action that
exchange sequence S acts on the city sequence A, so after A ⊕ S, we
will obtain the city sequence B = (2,1,3,4).
Assuming that A = (1,5,3,2,4) is a city sequence, B = (2,5,1,3,4) is
also a city sequence, if we want to get B after A ⊕ S, we need to
swap the serial number in A for several times. In this example, we
can obtain B by swapping the first number and the third number in
A, then swapping the first number and the fourth number. So the
exchange sequence S should be expressed as S = ((1,3),(1,4)).
In addition, under the circumstance that the sequence A and
sequence B both have the same n numbers, but those n numbers
may be arranged in different ways. In the worst case, we need to
swap numbers in A for at least (n-1) times so that A can be changed
into B. Most cases are simple, in which we do not have to carry out
the operation for (n-1) times.
:
Obtain the sequence. Assuming A = (1,5,3,2,4) is a city sequence,
B = (2,5,1,3,4) is also a city sequence, AB means to get the exchange
sequence S, that conforms to A ⊕ S = B. In other word, S = AB, and
S = ((1,3),(1,4)).
:
Similarity calculation. S1 S2 tries to get the intermediate value
between S1 and S2 by comparing S1 and S2 . The intermediate value
is the result of learning from S1 and S2 . In specific, S1 S2 means
the following calculation: S1  S2 = S1 + (S2 − S1) ÷ 2. S1 = (1,3),
S2 = (1,5), S = S1 S2 , so S = (1,4) (2.3 means rounding up 2.3, so
its value should be 3). Assuming S1 = ((1,3),(1,4),(1,1),(1,1)) is an
exchange sequence, S2 = ((1,5),(1,3),(1,4),(1,2)) is also an exchange
sequence, so S1 S2 = ((1,4),(1,4),(1,3),(1,2)).
After introducing the new operators, it is known that the parti-
cle route velocity should be an exchange sequence. New formulas
ensure that when solving MTSP, each particle can update its route
position by learning from both its own current best route position
breakpoint position updates in this way. Then, set the inertia weight
and learning factors appropriately. Therefore, the particle can have
(4)
appropriate motion inertia, the ability of self-summary and self-
learning, and the ability to learn from the excellent individuals in
the swarm.
(5)
 5.2. Initialization and the fitness function
The position and velocity of particles are initialized randomly.
(6)
Due to the fact that the representation of the particle position is
the same as that of population in PGA, their initialization meth-
ods are also the same. Each particle route velocity in the particle
swarm is an exchange sequence. Randomly generate the original
original exchange sequence are random integers between 1 and N.
In addition, PSO adopts the fitness function in IPGA.
The process of mutation operations in PGA and IPGA assures
that no infeasible solutions would occur in the chromosomes after
mutation. The exchange sequence operator in PSO also ensures that
there is no chance of infeasibility in the particle route position.
However, we have to fix the infeasibility of particle route velocity
and particle breakpoint position.
When using (4) to update particle route velocities, it
is likely that we would obtain some infeasible exchange
sequences. For example, suppose we have  N cities, ini for-
mula (4), after calculating c1 × r1 × pbestRoute  XRoute 
 i

and c2 × r2 × gbestRoute  XRoute , we will obtain two
intermediate exchange sequences, but the value range of
which might differ from 1 to N. The same thing  happens
i
after calculating c1 × r1 × pbestRoute  XRoute   c2 ×
 i
 i i
r × gbestRoute  XRoute , ω × VRoute , and ω × VRoute 
2  i
  i

c1 × r1 × pbestRoute  XRoute
  c2 × r2 × gbestRoute  XRoute  .
We fix this kind of infeasibility by directly changing the value of
the number to 1 if the number in the exchange sequence is smaller
than 1, and directly changing the value of the number into N if the
number in the exchange sequence is greater than N.
It is also likely that we would obtain some infeasible par-
ticle breakpoint positions when using (6). For example, every
time when we use the  operator in (6), we would obtain an
intermediate breakpoint sequence. This intermediate breakpoint
sequence might not satisfy the four breakpoints constraints men-
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
tioned in Section 3.1. If the new breakpoint sequence does not
satisfy the four breakpoints constraints mentioned in Section
3.1, we fix this kind of infeasibility by replacing the infeasible
result with the left operand of the operator, which should be

a rational breakpoint in (6). The same issue happens after calcu-
i i
 W–PSO
lating r3 × pbestBreak  XBreak and r4 × gbestBreak  XBreak .
For this infeasibility problem, we do recalculation until a feasible
solution is found.
5.4. Algorithm − a general flow of processing
(1) Initialize the particle swarm. Namely, assign original particle
1
route position XRoute randomly for each particle, and assign
exchange sequence VRoute 1 randomly for XRoute1 . Additionally, for
1
each particle route position XRoute , randomly assign its origi-
1 sample instances for the TSP and related problems. Unlike the well-
nal particle breakpoint position XBreak which can satisfy the
minimum number of cities requirement.
(2) Set pbest for each particle in the original particle swarm.
1 TSP approaches. We set the number of salesmen to one, and then
Namely, set pbestRoute of each particle as this particle’s XRoute
1 use the benchmark instances presented in TSPLIB.
and set pbestBreak of each particle as this particle’s XBreak .
(3) Set gbest for original particle swarm. Namely, find the particle
that has the best fitness in the original particle swarm, then
1 parameters tuning. Conclusions from other existing studies on
set gbestRoute as this particle’s XRoute , and set gbestBreak as this
1
particle’s XBreak .
(4) Let i = 1 (i indicates the current generation).
i
(5) Based on particles’ current VRoute i
, XRoute , pbestRoute and gbe-
i+1
stRoute, use formula (4) to get VRoute .
i i+1
(6) Based on particles’ current XRoute and VRoute , use formula (5) to
i+1
get XRoute .
i
(7) Based on particles’ current XBreak , pbestBreak and gbestBreak,
i+1
use formula (6) to get XBreak .
i+1 i+1
(8) Update pbest of each particle. Based on XRoute and XBreak of each
particle to calculate each particle’s fitness value. If the new
fitness value is better than the fitness value that calculated
from this particle’s pbestRoute and pbestBreak, then update this
i+1 i+1
particle’s pbestRoute and pbestBreak as XRoute and XBreak .
(9) Update gbest. Find the particle that has the best fitness value in
the particle swarm. If this particle’s fitness value is better than
the fitness value that is calculated from gbestRoute and gbest-
Break, then update gbestRoute and gbestBreak as this particle’s
i+1 i+1
XRoute and XBreak . experiments for IPGA using the instances from TSPLIB. We com-
(10) Let i = i + 1. If i is bigger than the specified maximum number
of iterations, then the algorithm is finished; otherwise turn to
step (5).
6. Experimental studies
We put forward a series of comparative experiments on PGA,
IPGA and PSO. In each of the comparative experiments, all three
algorithms share the same configurations and the same irrel-
evant variables, including the same original population/particle
swarm and the same city locations (Irrelevant variables refer to
the variables in the algorithm that would not drastically affect
the performance). One state of the art method from literature
called invasive weed optimization algorithm is implemented and
compared with PGA, IPGA and PSO. The experiment platform
is MacBook Pro with 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 8 GB
1867 MHz DDR3 memory.
6.1. Algorithm validity test
First set of experiments is to test each algorithm’s validity. In
this experiment, the test data comes from TSPLIB (http://comopt.
ifi.uni-heidelberg.de/software/TSPLIB95/)[58]. TSPLIB is a library of
571
Table 1
Values of parameters used in algorithms.
Size of population/Number of particles 100
Mutation rate in PGA 0.01
1.1
C1 − PSO 2
C2 − PSO 2
Table 2
Test instance and obtained solutions.
Instance Cities Optimal in TSPLIB PGA IPGA PSO
st70 70 675 1055.4422 677.1945 2670.2450
known TSP, there is no open benchmark for testing MTSP. To test
each algorithm’s validity, we transfer our MTSP approaches into
,
The parameter configuration for algorithms in this experiment
is reported in Table 1. We select these values after a thorough
the parameter choosing issue are also considered [87–95]. The
parameter selection is an optimization problem. [55] presents
a state-of-the-art survey of parameter control strategy. Parame-
ters in their study include population size, mutation rates, etc. To
compare the impact of various parameters on the algorithm perfor-
mance, we complete numerous tests. Eventually we discover that
the values in Table 1 are the most appropriate ones that can speed
up the process. For this reason, we chose the values in Table 1 to do
all of the following experiments.
The test instance and the solutions obtained by each algorithm
are showed in Table 2. It’s worth mentioning that the results in
Table 2 are all obtained from only a single test, meaning that they
may not be the optimal solutions.
From Table 2, we can conclude that our two PGA algorithms and
the one PSO algorithm can solve the TSP to some extent. The IPGA
can produce a high-quality solution. The result of IPGA is really close
to the optimal solution in TSPLIB, and it is superior than PGA and
PSO. Since the solutions obtained with IPGA is so much better than
PGA and PSO, to reveal the performance of IPGA, we conduct more
pare our results with both the TSPLIB benchmark and the results
provided by other existing approaches. Totally seven TSP problems
are solved. The comparison and the results of various methods
for the tested TSPLIB instances are listed in Table 3. The compu-
tational results demonstrate that the IPGA is very competitive with
the state-of-the-art methods in the literature, and it is capable of
finding high quality solutions.
Due to the fact that we research the symmetric minsum MTSP
with multiple depots, closed paths, and a minimum city num-
ber restriction, as far as we know, there is no specific method
proposed for this problem. To compare the performance of our
algorithms with other approaches that may appear in the future,
we report our test results using the TSPLIB instances in Table 4.
The experimental instances are with different problem size and
salesmen. We use the eil51, eil76, eil101, kroA100, kroA150, and
kroA200, because these instances are the most frequently used
instances by other researchers when solving other types of MTSP
[48,66,68,81–83,100,106]. In Table 4, M refers to the number of
salesmen, and M is from 2 to 5. The reason why we test our algo-
rithms with these numbers of salesmen is because in other MTSP
literatures, 2–5 are the most frequently tested numbers of sales-
men when using the above instances [48,66,68,81–83,100,106]. All
instances’ computational results are listed in Table 4. As we only
572 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580

Table 3
Results of comparative studies.

Instance st70 eil51 eil76 eil101 kroA100 kroA150 kroA200

TSPLIB 675 426 538 629 21282 26524 29368

Our IPGA 677.1945 428.9816 555.7116 661.9916 21483.2780 28685.4181 34520.5099
[17] – 429 538 – 21282 – –
[18] 677.109 – 544.369 – 21285.443 – –
[19] – 433.05 562.93 689.67 – – –
[36] – 426 538 629 21282 – 29369
[16] 675 426 – – – – –
[6] – – 547.3 – – 26789.2 29934.9
[37] – 768.181 1263.521 – 84224.503 – 206281.560
[47] 689.4 – 558.7 659.0 21625.7 – –
[3] – 436.16 554.73 – – – –
[2] – 426 538.3 632.1 – – –
[15] 677 427 547 646 21352 27458 –

Table 4
Test instances and their solutions with multiple salesmen.

Instance NumofCities Algorithm M=2 M=3 M=4 M=5

eil51 51 IWO 651.3250 897.5994 1129.9851 1465.2615

PGA 641.1901 652.6491 665.7826 610.0616
IPGA 421.2434 414.1578 420.4573 429.4046
PSO 1119.7457 1058.7641 1083.1644 1079.2563
eil76 76 IWO 856.8731 1184.7318 1508.8931 1807.4436
PGA 1127.4644 1106.2985 1158.0345 1067.0613
IPGA 562.2230 565.7708 593.9784 546.0394
PSO 1823.7799 1867.5903 1849.7804 1766.2633
eil101 101 IWO 1021.5849 1418.9286 1754.8493 2121.4964
PGA 1743.5693 2007.0738 1829.0473 1870.0026
IPGA 671.5268 735.1369 749.9429 720.0511
PSO 2637.4476 2620.6196 2584.8125 2564.5750
kroA100 100 IWO 32968.9254 45697.6433 58404.7952 72544.3838
PGA 67156.0333 71686.2766 75062.3573 77737.3361
IPGA 21996.9516 25889.1331 23312.4546 24271.6862
PSO 124690.4115 127181.2091 124405.8296 123017.4943
kroA150 150 IWO 41918.5382 57256.0079 72961.4759 89122.4975
PGA 158081.3039 161911.9380 160985.4548 164183.7529
IPGA 35169.8579 44004.4575 36070.8517 46004.4067
PSO 204422.1032 196907.7808 199202.4626 201597.2370
kroA200 200 IWO 45619.4740 66659.3110 82029.6028 103767.1568
PGA 232679.5527 229190.7521 231062.0829 244364.0721
IPGA 47679.0755 53166.9713 59225.4007 58581.9413
PSO 270488.1042 274854.1682 276537.2630 270835.0476

tested for once, the results have not been optimized. Addition- Table 5
Computing overhead.
ally, Column Instance lists the names of tested instances. Column
NumofCities lists the number of cities in the instance problem. The PGA IPGA PSO IWO
minimum number of cities that each salesman must go through is 7.97 s ± 0.48 21.42 s ± 0.15 329.82 s ± 28.48 31.72 s ± 2.07
set as 1. The following results can also reveal the performance of
IPGA is superior in terms of the quality of solution. The solution
values of IPGA are shown in bold. Table 6
We further implement the invasive weed optimization algo- Computing overhead.
rithm with local search (IWO), which is the best performing PGA IPGA PSO IWO
algorithm among the three algorithms proposed by Venkatesh and
4.98 s ± 0.03 21.68 s ± 3.19 154.80 s ± 4.48 25.68 s ± 2.52
Singh [79]. We use IWO [79] to solve our MTSP. The solution values
of IWO are underlined and shown in italics in Table 4. Very obvi-
ously may see from Table 4 that our PGA, IPGA and PSO all perform
much better than IWO. in Table 5. The value before “ ± ” is average time consumption comes
from 35 tests, and the value after “ ± ” is the standard deviation
comes from the same 35 tests. As a comparison, we implement the
6.2. Comparative experiments and algorithm performance IWO [79]. The convergence ability of IWO is shown in Fig. 6. The
solution obtained with IWO is shown in Fig. 7.
In this part, we test our algorithms for 35 cities, 5 salesmen and We also test our algorithms for 15 cities, 3 salesmen, 5000 iter-
the minimum number of cities that each salesman must have trav- ations and the minimum number of cities that each salesman must
elled is 3. We use 5000 iterations because after 5000 iterations the have travelled is 3. Other parameters are the same as shown in
algorithms’ convergence becomes flat. Other parameters are the Table 1. Fig. 8 displays the algorithm convergence ability of three
same as shown in Table 1. Fig. 4 displays the convergence ability algorithms this time, and Fig. 9 shows the test solution which is
of the three algorithms and Fig. 5 shows the test solution which expressed as route map obtained with the three algorithms this
is expressed as route map obtained with the three algorithms. The time. The time consumption of the algorithms under this condition
time consumption of the algorithms under this condition is shown is showed in Table 6 along with the standard deviations. IWO [79]
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580 573

Fig. 4. The algorithm convergence ability curve:(a) PGA; (b) IPGA; (c) PSO.

is implemented as a comparison. The convergence ability of IWO

is shown in Fig. 10. The solution obtained with IWO is shown in
Fig. 11.
Fig. 5. The test solution expressed as route map obtained with the algorithms:(a)
We can see from Figs. 4 and 8 that IPGA has already reached a PGA; (b) IPGA; (c) PSO.
steady state of convergence after 5000 iterations, however, appar-
ently PGA and PSO have not. Second, all of the figures above show
that the solutions of PGA and the solutions of PSO are similar (PGA’s
solution is slightly better than PSO’s solution), but they did not
574 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580

Fig. 6. IWO convergence ability curve.

Fig. 7. The test solution expressed as route map obtained with IWO.

converge to a solution as good as IPGA. Third, as it is showed in

Figs. 4 and 8, the solution distribution of IPGA does not fluctuate
as significantly as PGA and PSO. PGA fluctuates more significantly
than PSO. All above suggest that compared to PGA and PSO, IPGA
can converge quickly and smoothly with a better solution. More-
over, from Figs. 5 and 9, salesmen’s routes in the PGA and PSO are
more likely to cross together and cause collision than IPGA. It means
that the routes obtained from IPGA are more reasonable. Yet, from
Tables 5 and 6, PGA is the least time-consuming method, and PSO
is the most time-consuming one. The computing overhead of IPGA
and IWO are similar.
On the whole, all three algorithms have good convergence
ability. Compared to PGA and PSO, IPGA has a better search per-
formance, stronger global exploration ability, and much better
convergence ability. Additionally, IPGA is also more likely to find
a reasonable solution. The result that IPGA obtains is so satisfy-
ing that we can still say IPGA is the best even though it requires
more operation time than PGA. It is fast to run PGA, and it is easy
Fig. 8. The algorithm convergence ability curve:(a) PGA; (b) IPGA; (c) PSO.
for IPGA to find the optimal solution within a relatively short time
period, but it is a much more time-consuming and difficult task for
PSO.
PGA, IPGA and PSO, all perform much better comparing to IWO.
As shown in Figs. 6 and 10, IWO has a worse convergence ability.
Also, as shown in Figs. 7 and 11, IWO plunges into some local optima
at an early iteration and fails to jump out of it. It stops search-
ing new solution space, and thus, IWO obtains a worse solution in
the end. However, salesmen’s routes in the IWO are less likely to
 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
Fig. 9. The test solution expressed as route map obtained with the algorithms:(a)
PGA; (b) IPGA; (c) PSO.
575
Fig. 10. IWO convergence ability curve.
Fig. 11. The test solution expressed as route map obtained with IWO.
cross together and cause collision than salesmen’s routes in PGA
and PSO.
6.3. Results for different numbers of salesmen and numbers of
cities
At last, we explore how the number of salesmen and the number
of cities can influence the solution and compared the three algo-
rithms’ test results. In the following tests, the number of iteration is
set as 1000, and the minimum number of cities that each salesman
must have travelled equal to 1. Other parameters are set in Table 1.
The average optimal solution is the average of the solutions in 35
tests, and the standard deviation comes from the same 35 tests.
The computational results of the three algorithms are reported in
Table 7–9. When increasing the number of salesmen, the value of
the average optimal solution mostly tends to minimize. However,
there are some cases the value becomes to increase. Those values
are underlined and shown in bold and italics in Table 7–9. The rela-
tionship between the number of salesmen, the number of cities,
and the average optimal solution of each algorithm is displayed in
Fig. 12.
From Table 7–9, the average optimal solutions of IPGA are much
better than PGA’s and PSO’s. There are some cases where the stan-
dard deviation of IPGA is higher than that of PGA and PSO, but there
are no significant differences. The objective problem is a minisum
problem, so obtaining a minimum value of the solution is more
important. Even though some standard deviations of IPGA is higher
 576
Table 7
Average optimal solutions and standard deviations of PGA.

Average Optimal Solution The Number of Cities

± Standard Deviation
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 50 80 100

The Number of 2 12.3 ± 0.00 24.22 ± 0.57 33.38 ± 3.05 50.48 ± 5.00 73.85 ± 6.99 94.08 ± 7.28 109.22 ± 6.34 182.55 ± 11.82 321.66 ± 12.23 433.14 ± 19.45
Salesmen 3 3.78 ± 0.00 19.50 ± 1.28 29.47 ± 2.07 48.29 ± 5.83 75.46 ± 5.83 95.79 ± 9.26 110.93 ± 8.41 176.64 ± 11.94 319.92 ± 14.14 429.95 ± 16.58
4 1.17 ± 0.00 15.49 ± 1.90 30.62 ± 3.17 47.98 ± 4.72 76.11 ± 7.96 94.80 ± 6.38 110.50 ± 9.70 180.50 ± 10.63 321.85 ± 15.38 431.25 ± 13.15
5 – 12.59 ± 1.52 29.03 ± 3.80 45.76 ± 4.58 71.71 ± 6.74 95.49 ± 7.87 110.00 ± 10.32 180.16 ± 11.87 319.61 ± 11.82 427.38 ± 15.59
6 – 8.15 ± 1.29 23.43 ± 3.38 44.54 ± 5.59 73.58 ± 7.60 91.67 ± 8.27 111.75 ± 9.93 183.45 ± 15.41 320.21 ± 12.62 427.53 ± 18.27
7 – 4.46 ± 0.00 21.44 ± 3.23 41.79 ± 5.45 67.90 ± 5.69 88.30 ± 7.80 107.55 ± 11.05 176.49 ± 12.64 313.17 ± 11.91 426.43 ± 13.04
8 – 1.85 ± 0.00 17.19 ± 2.23 36.64 ± 5.14 62.00 ± 6.87 87.64 ± 8.38 106.65 ± 9.98 175.51 ± 12.21 308.80 ± 10.94 425.36 ± 14.56
9 – 0.68 ± 0.00 16.39 ± 3.29 32.34 ± 4.00 63.03 ± 7.78 84.07 ± 7.18 104.22 ± 9.8 171.02 ± 11.00 309.53 ± 16.50 424.74 ± 18.50

H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580

10 – – 11.89 ± 2.19 30.13 ± 4.29 57.73 ± 6.35 78.97 ± 8.43 100.71 ± 8.88 172.11 ± 10.64 309.96 ± 14.40 421.88 ± 13.37

Table 8
Average optimal solutions and standard deviations of IPGA.

Average Optimal Solution The Number of Cities

± Standard Deviation
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 50 80 100

The Number of 2 12.31 ± 0.00 23.18 ± 0.00 26.81 ± 0.17 30.75 ± 0.32 39.11 ± 1.08 45.20 ± 1.71 51.32 ± 3.16 70.72 ± 3.52 118.41 ± 6.69 152.30 ± 7.79
Salesmen 3 3.78 ± 0.00 18.62 ± 0.00 25.07 ± 0.32 29.96 ± 0.97 38.37 ± 1.84 46.00 ± 2.53 51.53 ± 2.41 75.65 ± 4.69 126.74 ± 6.78 164.58 ± 9.43
4 1.17 ± 0.00 13.85 ± 0.00 24.10 ± 0.32 29.80 ± 1.52 38.30 ± 2.85 47.11 ± 4.34 51.57 ± 4.84 79.71 ± 5.04 137.22 ± 11.63 176.50 ± 11.71
5 – 10.97 ± 0.00 21.20 ± 0.73 28.75 ± 1.58 37.61 ± 3.33 47.76 ± 2.62 53.52 ± 4.15 81.78 ± 7.03 143.21 ± 11.04 186.41 ± 13.07
6 – 7.55±0.00 18.06 ± 0.40 27.12 ± 1.08 38.36 ± 2.81 47.68 ± 3.73 54.96 ± 4.09 84.78 ± 6.23 146.66 ± 10.50 195.81 ± 15.03
7 – 4.46 ± 0.00 15.20 ± 0.44 25.23 ± 1.44 37.46 ± 3.37 43.78 ± 3.49 54.47 ± 4.65 85.39 ± 7.69 153.23 ± 13.42 204.40 ± 17.13
8 – 1.85 ± 0.00 12.13 ± 0.54 22.71 ± 1.57 34.82 ± 2.85 43.86 ± 3.85 51.76 ± 3.64 85.48 ± 6.48 156.83 ± 12.04 206.58 ± 13.86
9 – 0.68 ± 0.00 9.52 ± 0.26 20.32 ± 1.57 34.21 ± 2.59 42.93 ± 3.37 52.12 ± 3.42 84.52 ± 7.29 157.52 ± 8.68 213.45 ± 12.79
10 – – 7.08 ± 0.20 17.92 ± 1.43 30.66 ± 2.69 41.23 ± 3.48 50.98 ± 4.19 87.27 ± 7.35 163.67 ± 10.46 218.52 ± 13.27
 Table 9
Average optimal solutions and standard deviations of PSO.

Average Optimal Solution The Number of Cities

± Standard Deviation
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 50 80 100

The Number of Salesmen 2 12.31 ± 0.00 23.53 ± 0.35 36.70 ± 1.48 56.44 ± 2.88 80.80 ± 3.75 100.30 ± 5.32 119.02 ± 3.99 184.59 ± 5.32 312.06 ± 7.70 405.67 ± 9.64
3 3.78 ± 0.00 19.38 ± 1.28 34.07 ± 1.71 52.03 ± 2.82 78.13 ± 3.07 96.57 ± 4.20 115.84 ± 4.78 181.22 ± 6.34 308.38 ± 6.04 402.41 ± 8.83
4 1.17 ± 0.00 15.28 ± 1.10 32.00 ± 1.67 50.69 ± 2.35 74.90 ± 2.66 95.97 ± 3.72 113.26 ± 4.19 179.97 ± 5.07 304.31 ± 7.79 401.26 ± 6.77
5 – 11.01 ± 0.10 27.99 ± 1.55 46.54 ± 2.29 71.66 ± 3.02 91.73 ± 2.49 110.37 ± 3.45 174.99 ± 4.83 299.53 ± 8.33 397.84 ± 8.52
6 – 7.62 ± 0.22 23.97 ± 1.40 43.38 ± 2.09 68.04 ± 3.26 88.20 ± 4.34 105.57 ± 3.68 172.00 ± 4.08 296.78 ± 7.60 391.33 ± 8.06
7 – 4.46 ± 0.00 20.91 ± 1.89 39.24 ± 2.53 62.72 ± 2.65 82.43 ± 3.83 102.15 ± 5.80 165.94 ± 6.49 292.07 ± 8.90 387.62 ± 5.53
8 – 3.33 ± 0.81 16.42 ± 1.38 36.71 ± 2.89 58.29 ± 2.54 79.22 ± 4.14 97.44 ± 4.89 163.04 ± 6.25 289.81 ± 6.53 380.85 ± 8.38
9 – 0.68 ± 0.00 13.00 ± 0.89 32.84 ± 2.67 54.45 ± 3.73 76.04 ± 3.08 93.31 ± 3.99 157.76 ± 7.05 286.61 ± 9.03 379.51 ± 9.74

H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580

10 – – 9.54 ± 0.85 29.07 ± 2.59 51.41 ± 2.59 72.00 ± 4.12 90.65 ± 3.84 159.07 ± 6.37 281.51 ± 6.62 377.41 ± 7.74
The performance of PGA and the performance of PSO are similar.
still draw the conclusion that the performance of IPGA is the best.
with the solution of PGA and PSO. As a result, from Table 7–9, we can
IPGA algorithm, its worst solution is still relatively good compared
than that of PGA and PSO, which suggests large fluctuations of the

solution of each algorithm: (a) PGA; (b) IPGA; (c) PSO.

Fig. 12. The relationship between the number of salesmen and the average optimal

577
578 H. Zhou et al. / Applied Soft Computing 64 (2018) 564–580
In Fig. 12, with the increase of the number of cities, the advan-
tage of IPGA is more obvious. To be specific, when the number of
cities is small, the average optimal solutions of three algorithms all
become smaller with the increase of the number of salesmen. When
the number of city become bigger, the average optimal solution of
IPGA starts to show the tendency toward becoming larger with the
increase of the number of salesmen. Also, the average optimal solu-
tion of PGA and PSO both no longer decrease but fluctuate with the
increase of the number of salesmen. Additionally, PGA’s tendency
to fluctuate is stronger. So, we can draw the conclusion, compared
with PGA and PSO, IPGA not only has a variety of advantages in
algorithm performance showed in Experiment 2, but also enables
us to decide the appropriate number of salesmen more easily. Such
a decision can even be easier to make when the number of cities is
big.
This phenomenon found from the experimental data has some
practical significance. From the economic point of view, the num-
ber of cities is certain for a given problem, so the actual question
is how to determine the optimal number of salesmen in a certain
range that can bring the maximum economic benefits. For PGA and
PSO, the relatively good number of salesmen is the number before
fluctuation appears; and for IPGA, if the given number of cities has
the tendency that the average optimal solution increases with the
increase of the number of salesmen, then the relatively good num-
ber of salesmen can be the smallest number in the certain range,
otherwise we need to combine other factors to determine the opti-
mal number of salesmen.
6.4. Summary of experiments
In Experiment 1, we compare our results with the known opti-
mal solutions in TSPLIB. By doing this, the ability of three algorithms
to solve TSP can be verified. Among PGA, IPGA and PSO, IPGA’s opti-
mal solution is very close to the optimal solution in TSPLIB, so IPGA
can solve TSP most effectively. To reveal the performance of IPGA,
more experiments on IPGA are conducted. We compare the solu-
tions with the results provided by other existing approaches in the
literature. The computational results demonstrate that the IPGA
is very competitive with the state-of-the-art methods for TSP. We
also report our test results using the TSPLIB instances in Table 4, and
compare PGA, IPGA and PSO with the one existing method called
IWO.
Experiment 2 compares and analyses the algorithms mainly
from the angle of the algorithm performance. In Experiment 2, we
compare the convergence ability, the quality of the solution, and
the time consumption of the PGA, IPGA and PSO. Comparison with
IWO is also made. The results show that IPGA is the best. The rea-
son why PGA and PSO are not as good as IPGA is that they have
two more serious shortcomings. First, “super individual” is more
likely to occur at the beginning of searching causing premature
convergence; second, differences between individuals become too
small in the later stage of searching, causing the algorithm to trap
in local optimum and stagnation. The fluctuation appeared in the
performance of PGA and PSO. Some good individuals are lost in
the process of evolution. It leads to occasional degradation, and
also causes the algorithm sometimes cannot emerge from the local
optimal solution.
In Experiment 3, we study how the number of salesmen and the
number of cities will affect the solution. It can be found that larger
number of salesmen does not necessarily generate a better solution.
So for a MTSP with given number of cities, we can definitely deter-
mine an appropriate number of salesmen combining with other
factors. Experiment 3 also shows that IPGA is better than PGA and
PSO.
7. Conclusions
MTSP exhibits a wide range of applicability, for example, in a
mobile robot agent path planning optimization [61]. The MTSP
studied in this paper is a typical NP-complete problem, however
with limited research efforts. We first introduce a PGA to solve the
MTSP. Then we improve the PGA and propose IPGA. Finally, we
present a swarm intelligence approach based on the PSO algorithm.
IWO [79] is implemented as a comparison. Algorithm performance
is analyzed and compared through a series of experimental stud-
ies. The results demonstrate that IPGA has the best performance;
GA could be superior for solving discrete problems. We also explore
that the performance of the algorithms has different effects on how
the number of salesmen and the number of cities would affect the
solution.
The proposed algorithms are feasible and effective in solving
complex optimization problems. However, there is still room for
improvement of algorithm efficiency. And some code adjustment
could be further employed to optimize the performance. Future
research will focus on other evolutionary computational tech-
nique such as ant colony algorithm (ACO). Improvements could
be anticipated. We may also consider other categories of relevant
stochastic problems, such as the multi-objective knapsack com-
monly encounter in combinatorial optimization.
Acknowledgement
Support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(NSFC) 61773352, the projects of Communication University of
China and Fund of CSCSE are gratefully appreciated.
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