An Improved Modular Hybrid Ant Colony Approach for Solving Traveling Salesman Problem

Abstract

Our primary aim is to design a framework to solve the well known
traveling salesman problem(TSP) using combined approach of
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA).
Several solutions exists for the above problem using ACO or GA
and even using a hybrid approach of ACO and GA. Our
framework gives the optimal solution for the above problem by
using the modular hybrid approach of ACO and GA along with
heuristic approaches.We have incorporated GA, RemoveSharp
and LocalOpt heuristic approaches in ACO module, hence each
iteration calls the GA and heuristics within ACO module which
results in a higher amount of pheromone deposited in the optimal
path for global pheromone update. As a result the convergence is
quicker and solution is optimal.