Solving travelling salesman problem using hybrid fluid genetic algorithm (HFGA)

Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a problem in which the shortest possible route enabling a salesman to return to the starting point after visiting all the cities exactly once is determined. Travelling Salesman Problem is the basis for many problems ranging from vehicle routing to printed circuit boards assembly. This problem has been attracting great attention from researchers in the field of optimization; nevertheless it is difficult to solve TSP, especially for large-scale data sets. This paper presents a hybrid solution method based on Fluid Genetic Algorithm, Nearest Neighbor and 2-Opt methods for the solution of TSP. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated with the solution values of the Nearest Neighbor, Genetic Algorithm, Tabu Search, Ant Colony Optimization and the Tree Physiology Optimization algorithms in the literature. The solution results show the superiority of the proposed method in terms of solution time and quality.