Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem

Elizabeth F. Gouvêa Goldbarg, Givanaldo R. de Souza, and Marco César Goldbarg

Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics,

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte,
Campus Universitário Lagoa Nova, Natal , Brazil
{beth, gold}@dimap.ufrn.br, [email protected]

Abstract. This paper presents a competitive Particle Swarm Optimization algo-

rithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem, where the velocity operator is based
upon local search and path-relinking procedures. The paper proposes two ver-
sions of the algorithm, each of them utilizing a distinct local search method.
The proposed heuristics are compared with other Particle Swarm Optimization
algorithms presented previously for the same problem. The results are also
compared with three effective algorithms for the TSP. A computational experi-
ment with benchmark instances is reported. The results show that the method
proposed in this paper finds high quality solutions and is comparable with the
effective approaches presented for the TSP.

1 Introduction
The Traveling Salesman is a classical NP-hard combinatorial problem that has
been an important test ground for many algorithms. Given a graph G = (N,E), where
N = {1,...,n} is the set of nodes and E = {1,...,m} is the set of edges of G, and costs,
cij, associated with each edge linking vertices i and j, the problem consists in finding
the minimal total length Hamiltonian cycle of G. The length is calculated by the
summation of the costs of the edges in a cycle. If for all pairs of nodes {i,j}, the costs
cij and cji are equal then the problem is said to be symmetric, otherwise it is said to be
asymmetric. A survey of the TSP is presented by Gutin and Punnen [10].
The term A-Life is utilized to describe researches on systems that simulate essen-
tial properties of the real life, with two general lines:
- how computational techniques may help the investigation of natural phenomena,
and
- how biological techniques may help to solve computational problems.
Several bio-inspired methods were proposed to solve Combinatorial Optimization
problems, such as Genetic Algorithms [12], Memetic Algorithms [17], Cultural Algo-
rithms [24] and Ant Systems [5], among others. Particle swarm optimization, PSO,
algorithms belong also to the class of bio-inspired methods [14]. This is a population-
based technique introduced by a Psychologist, James Kennedy, and an Electrical En-
gineer, Russell Eberhart, who based their method upon the behavior of bird flocks.
PSO algorithms for the TSP were presented previously by Onwubulu and Clerc [18]
and Wang et al. [26]. Hybrid PSO approaches for the same problems were also pre-
sented by Machado and Lopes [16] and Pang et al. [19].

J. Gottlieb and G.R. Raidl (Eds.): EvoCOP 2006, LNCS 3906, pp. 99 – 110, 2006.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006
100 E.F.G. Goldbarg, G.R. de Souza, and M.C. Goldbarg

This paper presents a new PSO algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem. The
main difference between the approach reported in this paper and the previous ones re-
gards the velocity operators. In this paper local search and path-relinking procedures
are proposed as velocity operators for a discrete optimization problem.
Local search is a traditional optimization method that starts with an initial solution
and proceeds by searching for a better solution in a neighborhood defined for the
starting solution. If a better solution is found, then it is assumed as the new current so-
lution and the process of searching in its neighborhood is re-started. This process con-
tinues until no improvement of the current solution is found [1].
Path-relinking is an intensification technique which ideas were originally proposed
by Glover [8] in the context of scheduling methods to obtain improved local decision
rules for job shop scheduling problems [9]. The strategy consists in generating a path
between two solutions creating new solutions. Given an origin, xs, and a target solu-
tion, xt, a path from xs to xt leads to a sequence xs, xs(1), xs(2), …, xs(r) = xt, where
xs(i+1) is obtained from xs(i) by a move that introduces in xs(i+1) an attribute that
reduces the distance between attributes of the origin and target solutions. The roles
of origin and target can be interchangeable. Some strategies for considering such
roles are:
• forward: the worst among xs and xt is the origin and the other is the target solution;
• backward: the best among xs and xt is the origin and the other is the target solution;
• back and forward: two different trajectories are explored, the first using the best
among xs and xt as the initial solution and the second using the other in this role;
• mixed: two paths are simultaneously explored, the first starting at the best and the
second starting at the worst among xs and xt, until they meet at an intermediary so-
lution equidistant from xs and xt.
The paper is organized as follows. Particle swarm optimization is described in Sec-
tion 2. The proposed algorithm and its variants are described in Section 3. A computa-
tional experiment is reported in Section 4. The experiment compares the results of the
proposed approach with previous PSO algorithms. To date PSO algorithms for the
TSP have failed to produce results comparable to competitive techniques. A compari-
son with three effective techniques proposed for the Traveling Salesman Problem
shows that the proposed approach produces high quality solutions. Finally, some
concluding remarks are presented in Section 5.

2 Particle Swarm Optimization

Particle swarm optimization, PSO, is an evolutionary computation technique inspired
in the behavior of bird flocks, fish schools and swarming theory. PSO algorithms
were first introduced by Kennedy and Eberhart [14] for optimizing continuous
nonlinear functions. The fundamentals of their method lie on researches on computer
simulations of the movements of social creatures [11], [21], [23].
Given a population of solutions (the swarm) for a given problem, each solution is
seen as a social organism, also called particle. The method attempts to imitate the be-
havior of the real creatures making the particles “fly” over a solution space, thus bal-
ancing the efforts of search intensification and diversification. Each particle has a
 Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem 101

value associated with it. In general, particles are evaluated with the objective function
being optimized. A velocity is also assigned to each particle in order to direct the
“flight” through the problem space. The artificial creatures have a tendency to follow
the best ones among them. In the classical PSO algorithm, each particle
• has a position and a velocity
• knows its own position and the value associated with it
• knows the best position it has ever achieved, and the value associated with it
• knows its neighbors, their best positions and their values
As pointed by Pomeroy [20], rather than exploration and exploitation what has to
be balanced is individuality and sociality. Initially, individualistic moves are prefer-
able to social ones (moves influenced by other individuals), however it is important
for an individual to know the best places visited by its neighbors in order to “learn”
good moves.
The neighborhood may be physical or social [18]. Physical neighborhood takes dis-
tances into account, thus a distance metric has to be established. This approach tends
to be time consuming, since each iteration distances must be computed. Social
neighborhoods are based upon “relationships” defined at the very beginning of the
algorithm.
The move of a particle is a composite of three possible choices:
• To follow in its own way
• To go back to its best previous position
• To go towards its best neighbor’s previous position or towards its best neighbor
Equations (1) and (2) are utilized to update the particle’s position and velocity at each
time step [6].
xt+1 = xt+ vt (1)

Vt+1= w.vt + c1.rand1.(pbestt – xt) + c2.rand2 .(gbestt – xt) (2)

Where xt and vt are the particle’s position and velocity at instant t, respectively, pbestt
is the particle’s best previous position, gbestt is the best position that any particle has
achieved so far, w is the inertia factor [25], c1 and c2 are social/cognitive coefficients
that quantify how much the particle trusts its experience and how much it trusts the
best neighbor, rand1 and rand2 are randomly generated numbers.
To apply PSO to discrete problems, one is required to define a representation for
the position of a particle and to define velocity operators regarding the movement op-
tions allowed for the particles (and ways for, possibly, combining movements).
A general framework of a PSO algorithm for a minimization problem is listed in
the following.
procedure PSO
{
Initialize a population of particles
do
for each particle p
102 E.F.G. Goldbarg, G.R. de Souza, and M.C. Goldbarg

Evaluate particle p
If the value of p is better than the value of pbest
Then, update pbest with p
end_for
Define gbest as the particle with the best value
for each particle p do
Compute p’s velocity
Update p’s position
end_for
while (a stop criterion is not satisfied)
}

3 PSO for the Traveling Salesman Problem

Usually, evolutionary algorithms represent TSP solutions as a permutation on the n
vertices of a given instance. This representation is also adopted in this work. A social
neighborhood containing only the global best particle (representing the best current
solution) is defined for each member of the population. A particle has three move-
ment options:
• To follow in its own way
• To go back to its best previous position
• To go towards the global best solution (particle)
The main difference between the proposed algorithm and the previous approaches lies
on the way the velocity operators are defined. The first option of a particle, that is to
follow its own way, is implemented by means of a local search procedure. Two local
search procedures were utilized, each of them defining a version of the algorithm. The
first local search procedure is based upon an inversion operator to build neighbor so-
lutions. The inversion operator inverts the elements of a particle between two indices,
a and b. The difference b-a varies between 1 (simulating a 2-swap move) and
n-1. Thus, when v1 is applied to a particle p, the local search procedure starts inverting
sequences of two elements, then inverts sequences of three elements, and so on.
Figure 1 illustrates an inversion of a sequence of elements defined by the interval a=2
and b=5 (a sequence with four elements) of particle p resulting on particle p’.

p 5 6 8 1 3 7 2 4 p’ 5 3 1 8 6 7 2 4

a b

Fig. 1. Inversion of elements among indices a and b

 Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem 103

The second local search procedure is the Lin-Kernighan neighborhood, LK [15].

This is a recognized efficient improvement method for the TSP. The basic LK algo-
rithm has a number of decisions to be made and depending on the strategies adopted
by programmers distinct implementations of this algorithm may result on different
performances. The literature contains reports of many LK implementations with
widely varying behavior [13]. In this work the algorithm utilized the LK implementa-
tion of the Concorde solver [3].

swap-left swap-leftt

1 2 3 4 5 1 3 2 4 5 3 1 2 4 5
xs (a) (b)

3 5 1 2 4 3 1 5 2 4 3 1 2 5 4
xt (d) (c)

Fig. 2. Path-relinking operator

Another velocity operator is considered when a particle has to move from its cur-
rent position to another (pbest or gbest). In these cases the authors consider that a
natural way to accomplish this task is to perform a path-relinking operation between
the two solutions.
The velocity utilized to move a particle from an origin to a target position is de-
fined as a path-relinking operation. The relinking operator utilized in this work is il-
lustrated in Figure 2. The operator swaps one element with its right (left) neighbor.
The steps of a path-relinking procedure that explores solutions in the path between the
origin solution (1 2 3 4 5) and the target solution (3 5 1 2 4) is shown. First, the ele-
ment 3 is moved to the first position by swapping it with elements 2 (Figure 2(a)) and
1 (Figure 2(b)). At this point, element 5 has to be moved to the second position. It is
swapped with element 4 (Figure 2(c)), element 2 (Figure 2(d)) and, finally, it is
swapped with element 1, when the target solution is reached. The swap operators lead
to O(n2) procedures.
The path-relinking is applied simultaneously from the origin to the target solution
and vice-versa (back and forward). It is also utilized the swap-left and swap-right
operations.
Combinations of movements are possible. For instance, to combine the first and
third option of movement one can stop the local search procedure after a given num-
ber of iterations and then do path-relinking among the solution obtained in the local
search and global best solution. Although combinations could be done, in the pro-
posed algorithms, no combination of movements was implemented. Initial probabili-
ties are assigned to each one of the three possible movements. These probabilities
change as the algorithm runs. A general framework of the algorithm implemented in
this work is listed in the following.
104 E.F.G. Goldbarg, G.R. de Souza, and M.C. Goldbarg

procedure PSO_TSP
{
Define initial probabilities for particles’ moves:
p1 = x /*to follow its own way*/
p2 = y /*to go forward pbest*/
p3 = z /*to go forward gbest*/
/* x+y+z=1 */
Initialize a population of particles
do
for each particle p
Evaluate particle p
If the value of p is better than the value of pbest
Then, update pbest with p
end_for
Define gbest as the particle with the best value
for each particle p do
Choose p’s velocity
Update p’s position
end_for
Update probabilities:
p1 = p1×0.95; p2 = p2×1.01; p3 = 100%-(p1+p2)
while (a stop criterion is not satisfied)
}

At the beginning, the algorithm defines the probabilities associated with each ve-
locity for the particles, where p1, p2 and p3 correspond, respectively, to the likelihood
that the particle follows its own way, goes toward the best previous position and goes
toward the best solution found so far. Then, the algorithm proceeds modifying the
particle’s position according to the velocity operator randomly chosen. Finally, the
probabilities are updated.
Initially, a high probability is set to p1, and low values are assigned to p2 and p3.
The goal is to allow that individualistic moves occur more frequently in the first itera-
tions. During the execution this situation is being modified and, at the final iterations,
p3 has the highest value. The idea is to intensify the search in good regions of the
search space in the final iterations.
 Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem 105

Particles are initialized with a random adaptive version of the heuristic nearest
neighbor [2]. The procedure is similar to the construction phase of a GRASP algo-
rithm [7]. At first, a city is randomly chosen, then, other cities are added to the
solution in each step. A restricted candidate list is built with the 5% cities closest to
the last one inserted in the solution. A city is chosen at random from this list and is
added to the solution. This step is repeated until a TSP solution is completed.

4 Computational Experiments
The proposed algorithms were implemented in C++ on a Pentium IV (3.0 GHz and
512 Mb of RAM) running Linux. The algorithms were applied to symmetric instances
of the benchmark TSPLIB [22] with sizes ranging from 51 to 7397. The stop criteria
were:
• To find the optimum
• To reach a maximum number of iterations = 2000
• To reach a maximum number of iterations with no improvement of the best current
solution = 20
• To reach a maximum processing time = 60 seconds for instances with n < 1000,
300 seconds when 1000 ≤ n < 5000, 1000 seconds when 5000 ≤ n < 7000 and 2000
seconds for n ≥ 7000.
The population had a fixed size with 20 particles.
A first experiment compared the two proposed algorithms in 11 symmetric in-
stances with sizes ranging from 51 to 2103. Twenty independent runs of each algo-
rithm were performed. The results are showed in Table 1 in terms of percent deviation
from the optimal solution. This gap is computed with equation (3), where Sol and Opt
denote, respectively, the (best or average) solution obtained by the algorithm and the
optimal solution.

(Sol – Opt)×100/Opt (3)

The columns show the name of the TSPLIB instances, the best solution (Min) and
the average solution of the two versions of the proposed PSO algorithms denoted by
PSO-INV and PSO-LK, the versions with the inversion and LK local search proce-
dures, respectively.
Not surprisingly, PSO-LK exhibits a better performance than PSO-INV, since the
local search procedure embedded in the former version is more powerful than the lo-
cal search procedure of the latter version. However, a comparison of the results of the
weakest version of the proposed algorithm with the ones reported in the work of Pang
et al. [19] reveals that the former finds the best results. Once Wang et al. [26] reported
results just for one asymmetric TSP instance, the authors implemented their algorithm
in order to compare its performance with the proposed algorithm. Table 2 shows the
best results (percent deviations) of the weakest version of the proposed algorithm,
PSO-INV, and of the algorithms PSO-P [19] and PSO-W [26] for the three
TSP symmetric instances with n > 50 of the computational experiment reported by
Pang et al. [19].
106 E.F.G. Goldbarg, G.R. de Souza, and M.C. Goldbarg

Table 1. Comparison of the two versions of the proposed algorithms

PSO-INV PSO-LK
Instances
Min Av Min Av
eil51 0.2347 1.9836 0 0
berlin52 0 2.0041 0 0
eil76 2.4164 4.5167 0 0
rat195 5.8114 8.7581 0 0
pr299 5.8476 7.9952 0 0
pr439 4.4200 8.0111 0 0
d657 6.9656 9.6157 0 0
pr1002 9.8574 11.1900 0 0
d1291 13.2104 15.5505 0 0.0113
rl1304 10.4432 11.9942 0 0
d2103 16.7383 18.4180 0.0087 0.0267

Table 2. Comparison of two PSO heuristics with PSO-INV

Instance PSO-W PSO-P PSO-INV

eil51 114 2.54 0.2347
berlin52 115 2.12 0
eil76 162 4.75 2.4164

The results showed in Table 2 correspond to the best solution found in 20 inde-
pendent runs. The proposed algorithm PSO-INV was also applied to the asymmetric
instance br17 reported by Wang et al. [26]. The results are showed in Table 3, where
columns show the algorithm, the best and average percent deviation from the optimal
solution, and the average runtime in seconds.

Table 3. Comparison of PSO-INV and PSO-W for the TSPLIB instance br17

Algorithm Min Average T (s)

PSO-INV 0 0 < 0.01
PSO-W 0 16.66 60.04

A computational experiment investigated the differences between the results obtained

by the LK procedure [2] and the PSO-LK algorithm. This experiment aimed at finding
out if the proposed PSO approach was able to improve the LK [2] results. Table 4 shows
the percent difference from the optimum, for 30 TSPLIB symmetric instances with n
ranging from 439 to 7397. Bold elements mark when an improvement occurred. Twenty
independent runs of each algorithm were performed. The columns T show the average
time of each algorithm in seconds. From the thirty instances of the experiment, the PSO
approach was able to improve twenty-three minimal results and all the averages. A statis-
tical analysis shows that, the means of columns Min and Average of LK are 0.1115,
0.3431, respectively. The means of PSO-LK are 0.0022 and 0.0154. Although the run-
times of PSO-LK are higher than the LK, in average, improvements of 98% and 95%
were achieved on the best and mean results, respectively.
 Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem 107

Table 4. Comparison of LK and PSO-LK results

LK PSO-LK
Instance
Min Average T (s) Min Average T (s)
pr439 0.0000 0.0463 0.88 0.0000 0.0000 0.78
pcb442 0.0000 0.1119 0.67 0.0000 0.0000 0.80
d493 0.0029 0.1216 2.21 0.0000 0.0000 19.38
rat575 0.0295 0.1277 0.62 0.0000 0.0000 6.47
p654 0.0000 0.0078 3.72 0.0000 0.0000 1.90
d657 0.0020 0.1500 1.70 0.0000 0.0000 12.42
rat783 0.0000 0.0704 0.90 0.0000 0.0000 5.25
dsj1000 0.0731 0.2973 5.89 0.0027 0.0031 178.48
pr1002 0.0000 0.1318 1.96 0.0000 0.0000 9.50
u1060 0.0085 0.1786 3.12 0.0000 0.0000 38.18
vm1084 0.0017 0.0669 2.59 0.0000 0.0010 34.74
pcb1173 0.0000 0.1814 1.78 0.0000 0.0001 48.18
d1291 0.0039 0.4333 1.79 0.0000 0.0000 29.86
rl1304 0.0202 0.3984 2.67 0.0000 0.0000 21.62
rl1323 0.0463 0.2300 2.34 0.0000 0.0092 225.32
nrw1379 0.0547 0.1354 2.45 0.0017 0.0085 417.80
fl1400 0.0000 0.1215 14.87 0.0000 0.0000 15.42
fl1577 0.7371 2.2974 6.30 0.0000 0.0135 461.99
vm1748 0.0903 0.1311 4.66 0.0000 0.0018 854.17
u1817 0.1976 0.5938 1.88 0.0000 0.0863 789.18
rl1889 0.1836 0.3844 4.58 0.0000 0.0073 894.43
d2103 0.0597 0.3085 2.82 0.0000 0.0043 1137.56
u2152 0.2381 0.5548 2.16 0.0000 0.0717 1415.32
pr2392 0.0775 0.3904 3.78 0.0000 0.0021 577.78
pcb3038 0.1598 0.2568 5.42 0.0101 0.0396 323.94
fl3795 0.5665 1.0920 15.60 0.0000 0.0142 621.63
fnl4461 0.0882 0.1717 9.08 0.0296 0.0462 583.78
rl5915 0.3528 0.5343 10.08 0.0122 0.0633 1359.25
rl5934 0.2221 0.4761 10.65 0.0012 0.0650 983.04
pla7397 0.1278 0.2912 21.85 0.0075 0.0253 1563.22

Finally, Table 5 shows a comparison of the results obtained by PSO-LK and three
effective heuristics: Tourmerge [4], NYYY iterated Lin-Kermighan variant (reported
at http://www.research.att.com/~dsj/chtsp/) and JM iterated Lin-Kernighan variant.
The results of these heuristics were obtained in the DIMACS Challenge page:
http://www.research.att.com/~dsj/chtsp/results.html.
The columns related to PSO-LK show the best and average tours found in twenty
independent runs. The columns related to the Tourmerge algorithm show the best and
average tours obtained in five independent runs. Results are not reported for instances
fnl446 and pla7397. The columns related to the NYYY and JM iterated Lin-
Kernighan variants show the best tours obtained in ten n iterations runs.
108 E.F.G. Goldbarg, G.R. de Souza, and M.C. Goldbarg

Table 5. Comparison of heuristics for TSP symmetric instances

PSO-LK Tourmerge ILKNYYY ILKJM

Instance
Min Average Min Average Nb10 Nb10
dsj1000 0.0027 0.0031 0.0027 0.0478 0 0.0063
pr1002 0 0 0 0.0197 0 0.1482
u1060 0 0 0 0.0049 0.0085 0.0210
vm1084 0 0.0010 0 0.0013 0.0217 0.0217
pcb1173 0 0.0001 0 0.0018 0 0.0088
d1291 0 0 0 0.0492 0 0
rl1304 0 0 0 0.1150 0 0
rl1323 0 0.0092 0.01 0.0411 0.01 0
nrw1379 0.0017 0.0085 0 0.0071 0.0247 0.0018
fl1400 0 0 0 0 0 0
fl1577 0 0.0135 0 0.0225 0 0
vm1748 0 0.0018 0 0 0 0
u1817 0 0.0863 0.0332 0.0804 0.1643 0.2657
rl1889 0 0.0073 0.0082 0.0682 0.0082 0.0041
d2103 0 0.0043 0.0199 0.3170 0.0559 0
u2152 0 0.0717 0 0.0794 0 0.1743
pr2392 0 0.0021 0 0.0019 0.0050 0.1495
pcb3038 0.0101 0.0396 0.0036 0.0327 0.0247 0.1213
fl3795 0 0.0142 0 0.0556 0 0.0104
fnl4461 0.0296 0.0462 --- --- 0.0449 0.1358
rl5915 0.0122 0.0633 0.0057 0.0237 0.0580 0.0168
rl5934 0.0012 0.0650 0.0023 0.0104 0.0115 0.1723
pla7397 0.0075 0.0253 --- --- 0.0209 0.0497

From the twenty-one instances for which Tourmerge presented results, PSO-LK
finds five best minimal results, Tourmerge finds three best minimal results and both
algorithms find the same quality tours for thirteen instances. Regarding average re-
sults Tourmerge finds the best values on six instances and PSO-LK finds the best val-
ues on thirteen instances. The mean values of the “Min” and “Average” columns for
the twenty-one instances are 0.0013 and 0.0186 for PSO-LK and 0.0041 and 0.0467
for Tourmerge. These results show that, in average, PSO-LK has a better performance
than Tourmerge regarding minimal and average results.
Comparing the proposed algorithm with the NYYY iterated Lin-Kernighan variant,
one can observe that from the twenty-three instances of the experiment, PSO-LK
finds the best tours for thirteen instances, ILK-NYYY finds the best results for one in-
stance and same results are found for nine instances. The averages of the best results
of these two algorithms for the twenty-three instances are 0.0028 and 0.0199, PSO-
LK and ILK-NYYY, respectively.
The comparison with the JM iterated Lin-Kernighan version shows that the PSO-
LK algorithm finds the best results for sixteen instances and both algorithms find the
same tours quality for seven instances. The averages for PSO-LK and ILK-JM are
0.0028 and 0.0569, respectively.
 Particle Swarm for the Traveling Salesman Problem 109

5 Conclusions
This paper presented a PSO algorithm for the TSP where the concept of velocity is
differentiated when the particle has to follow its own way and when it goes forward
someone’s position. Local search procedures were applied in the former and path-
relinking operations were applied in the latter case.
Although some works where PSO algorithms were applied to the TSP were pre-
sented previously, those algorithms did not reported results which could be compared
with the ones obtained by effective heuristics. In this work, an effective PSO ap-
proach was presented for the TSP which results were compared with three high qual-
ity heuristics for this problem. The comparison showed that the proposed algorithm
outperforms the three heuristics regarding best tours. The comparison among the av-
erage results of PSO-LK and the Tourmerge also shows that the first heuristics finds
better results.

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