An improved self-organizing map approach to traveling salesman problem

Abstract

In this paper, an improved self-organizing map approach to solving the traveling salesman problem is proposed by fixing the number of nodes in the output layer of neural network, modifying the neighborhood function, and modifying the weight update rules. An overview of previous work on solving the traveling salesman problem is given. An extension of the proposed algorithm can also be used to solve multiple traveling salesman problems and robot path planning. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of providing a better solution within a reasonable time and much faster than conventional self-organizing map algorithms.