Tolerance Based Contract-or-Patch Heuristic for the Asymmetric TSP

In this paper we improve the quality of a recently suggested class of construction heuristics for the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (ATSP), namely the Contract-or-Patch heuristic. Our improvement is based on replacing the selection of each path to be contracted after deleting a heaviest arc from each short cycle in an Optimal Assignment Problem Solution (OAPS) by contracting a single arc from a short cycle in an OAPS with the largest upper tolerance with respect to one of the relaxed ATSP. The improved algorithm produces higher-quality tours than all previous COP versions and is clearly outperforming all other construction heuristics on robustness.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: CAAN
• Authors: Boris Goldengorin, Gerold Jäger, Paul Molitor
• Keywords: CAAN 2006, Construction Heuristics, Discrete Geometry, Short Cycle, Traveling Salesman Problem