Forget GPS. With no fancy maps or even brains, immune system cells can solve a simple version of the traveling salesman problem, a computational conundrum that has vexed mathematicians for decades.

Management Science, Vol. 35, No. 11, Focussed Issue on Variance Reduction Methods in Simulation (Nov., 1989), pp. 1393-1412 (20 pages) A problem posed by O. L. Deutsch (1988) as the Artificial ...

Given a graph whose arc traversal times vary over time, the time-dependent travelling salesman problem (TDTSP) consists in finding a Hamiltonian tour of least total duration covering the vertices of ...

Tackling the traveling salesman problem with chemotaxis is a nice example of when the suboptimal is optimal, says Bartumeus. Of course, with all the information, time and resources in the world, ...

Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research uses full code samples to detail an evolutionary algorithm technique that apparently hasn't been published before. The goal of a combinatorial optimization ...

Bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical problem which keeps computers busy for days. Scientists in the UK have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between ...

Is it hopeless to try to compute the shortest route to visit a large number of cities? Not just a good route but the guaranteed shortest. The task is the long-standing challenge known as the traveling ...

The human mind is a path-planning wizard. Think back to pre-lockdown days when we all ran multiple errands back to back across town. There was always a mental dance in the back of your head to make ...

We have found the best path to take between the stars. The travelling salesman problem, an infamous mathematical puzzle that seeks the shortest route between many locations while visiting each only ...