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Travelling Salesman Problem

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) involves finding the shortest possible route for a salesman to visit a set of cities and return to the starting point, with a non-negative cost associated with traveling between each pair of cities. While a brute-force approach evaluates all possible tours, a dynamic programming method can solve the problem more efficiently, with a time complexity of O(2^n * n^2). The document illustrates the dynamic programming algorithm and provides an example of calculating the minimum cost path through a set of cities.

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Anu Tiwari
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4 views

Travelling Salesman Problem

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) involves finding the shortest possible route for a salesman to visit a set of cities and return to the starting point, with a non-negative cost associated with traveling between each pair of cities. While a brute-force approach evaluates all possible tours, a dynamic programming method can solve the problem more efficiently, with a time complexity of O(2^n * n^2). The document illustrates the dynamic programming algorithm and provides an example of calculating the minimum cost path through a set of cities.

Uploaded by

Anu Tiwari
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Traveling-salesman Problem

In the traveling salesman Problem, a salesman must visits n cities. We can


say that salesman wishes to make a tour or Hamiltonian cycle, visiting
each city exactly once and finishing at the city he starts from. There is a
non-negative cost c (i, j) to travel from the city i to city j. The goal is to
find a tour of minimum cost. We assume that every two cities are
connected. Such problems are called Traveling-salesman problem (TSP).

Travelling salesman problem is the most notorious computational problem. We can use
brute-force approach to evaluate every possible tour and select the best one. For n number of
vertices in a graph, there are (n−1)! Number of possibilities. Thus, maintaining a higher
complexity.

However, instead of using brute-force, using the dynamic programming approach will obtain
the solution in lesser time, though there is no polynomial time algorithm.

Travelling Salesman Dynamic Programming Algorithm

Let us consider a graph G = (V,E), where V is a set of cities and E is a set of weighted edges.
An edge e(u, v) represents that vertices u and v are connected. Distance between
vertex u and v is d(u, v), which should be non-negative.

Suppose we have started at city 1 and after visiting some cities now we are in city j. Hence,
this is a partial tour. We certainly need to know j, since this will determine which cities are
most convenient to visit next. We also need to know all the cities visited so far, so that we
don't repeat any of them. Hence, this is an appropriate sub-problem.

For a subset of cities S ϵ� {1,2,3,...,n} that includes 1, and j ϵ� S, let C(S, j) be the length
of the shortest path visiting each node in S exactly once, starting at 1 and ending at j.

When |S|> 1 , we define 𝑪C(S,1)= ∝∝ since the path cannot start and end at 1.

Now, let express C(S, j) in terms of smaller sub-problems. We need to start at 1 and end at j.
We should select the next city in such a way that

C(S,j)=minC(S−{j},i)+d(i,j)where iϵS and i≠j


Analysis
There are at the most 2n.n sub-problems and each one takes linear time to solve. Therefore,
the total running time is O(2n.n2).

Example

In the following example, we will illustrate the steps to solve the


travelling salesman problem.

1 2 3 4
1 0 10 15 20
2 5 0 9 10
3 6 13 0 12
4 8 8 9 0

S=Φ

Cost(2,Φ,1)=d(2,1)=5
Cost(3,Φ,1)=d(3,1)=6
Cost(4,Φ,1)=d(4,1)=8
S=1

Cost(i,s)=min{Cos(j,s−(j))+d[i,j]}
Cost(2,{3},1)=d[2,3]+Cost(3,Φ,1)=9+6=15
Cost(2,{4},1)=d[2,4]+Cost(4,Φ,1)=10+8=18
Cost(3,{2},1)=d[3,2]+Cost(2,Φ,1)=13+5=18
Cost(3,{4},1)=d[3,4]+Cost(4,Φ,1)=12+8=20
Cost(4,{3},1)=d[4,3]+Cost(3,Φ,1)=9+6=15
Cost(4,{2},1)=d[4,2]+Cost(2,Φ,1)=8+5=13
S=2

Cost(2,{3,4},1)=min{d[2,3]+Cost(3,
{4},1)=9+20=29d[2,4]+Cost(4,{3},1)=10+15=25=25
Cost(3,{2,4},1)=min{d[3,2]+Cost(2,
{4},1)=13+18=31d[3,4]+Cost(4,{2},1)=12+13=25=25
Cost(4,{2,3},1)=min{d[4,2]+Cost(2,
{3},1)=8+15=23d[4,3]+Cost(3,{2},1)=9+18=27=23
S=3

Cost(1,{2,3,4},1)= Min of following


d[1,2]+Cost(2,{3,4},1)=10+25=35
d[1,3]+Cost(3,{2,4},1)=15+25=40
d[1,4]+Cost(4,{2,3},1)=20+23=43
he minimum cost path is 35.

Start from cost {1, {2, 3, 4}, 1}, we get the minimum value for d
[1, 2]. When s = 3, select the path from 1 to 2 (cost is 10) then go
backwards. When s = 2, we get the minimum value for d [4, 2].
Select the path from 2 to 4 (cost is 10) then go backwards.

When s = 1, we get the minimum value for d [4, 2] but 2 and 4 is


already selected. Therefore, we select d [4, 3] (two possible
values are 15 for d [2, 3] and d [4, 3], but our last node of the
path is 4). Select path 4 to 3 (cost is 9), then go to s = ϕ step. We
get the minimum value for d [3, 1] (cost is 6).

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