APPLICATION OF GENETIC ALGORITHMS TO THE TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEM

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to investigate in practice the possibility of using evolutionary algorithms to solve the traveling salesman problem on a real example. The goal was achieved by developing an original implementation of the evolutionary algorithm in Python, and by preparing an example of the traveling salesman problem in the form of a directed graph representing polish voivodship cities. As part of the work an application in Python was written. It provides a user interface which allows setting selected parameters of the evolutionary algorithm and solving the prepared problem. The results are presented in both text and graphical form. The correctness of the evolutionary algorithm's operation and the implementation was confirmed by performed tests. A large number of tested solutions (2500) and the analysis of the obtained results allowed for a conclusion that an optimal (relatively suboptimal) solution had been found.