Engineering an Approximation Scheme for Traveling Salesman in Planar Graphs

We present an implementation of a linear-time approximation scheme for the traveling salesman problem on planar graphs with edge weights. We observe that the theoretical algorithm involves constants that are too large for practical use. Our implementation, which is not subject to the theoretical algorithm\u27s guarantee, can quickly find good tours in very large planar graphs

A Swarm of Salesmen: Algorithmic Approaches to Multiagent Modeling

This honors thesis describes the algorithmic abstraction of a problem modeling a swarm of Mars rovers, where many agents must together achieve a goal. The algorithmic formulation of this problem is based on the traveling salesman problem (TSP), and so in this thesis I offer a review of the mathematical technique of linear programming in the context of its application to the TSP, an overview of some variations of the TSP and algorithms for approximating and solving them, and formulations without solutions of two novel TSP variations which are useful for modeling the original problem