Genetic algorithm solutions for the traveling salesman problem

A genetic approach (o generating solutions for the traveling salesman problem (TSP) is described and early results of tests are reported using a genetic algo­ rithm implementation known as GENTfOR which was developed at Colorado Stale University. The imple­ mentation uses a new, specialized genetic recombina­ tion operator which incorporates a high degree of nondeterminism and docs not require knowledge of dis­ tance between cities for recombination. Results reported substantiate the viability of the genetic approach for finding good solutions not only to the TSP but also to a more general class of optimization problems that do not incorporate the notion of weighted edges.