Solving Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem by Meerkat Swarm Optimization Algorithm

Abstract

Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem (MTSP) is one of various real-life applications, MTSP is the extension of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). TSP focuses on searching of minimum or shortest path (traveling distance) to visit all cities by salesman, while the primary goal of MTSP is to find shortest path for m paths by n salesmen with minimized total cost. Wherever, total cost means the sum of distances of all salesmen. In this work, we proposed metaheuristic algorithm is called Meerkat Swarm Optimization (MSO) algorithm for solving MTSP and guarantee good quality solution in reasonable time for real-life problems. MSO is a metaheuristic optimization algorithm that is derived from the behavior of Meerkat in finding the shortest path. The implementation is done using many dataset from TSPLIB95. The results demonstrate that MSO in most results is better than another results that compared in average cost that means the MSO superior to other results of MTSP.