Dept. of Applied Mathematics, University Ca'Foscari of Venice
Abstract
In the 2-period Balanced Traveling Salesman Problem (2B-TSP), the customers
must be visited over a period of two days: some must be visited daily, and the others on
alternate days (even or odd days); moreover, the number of customers visited in every tour
must be ‘balanced’, i.e. it must be the same or, alternatively, the difference between the
maximum and the minimum number of visited customers must be less than a given
threshold. The salesman’s objective is to minimize the total distance travelled over the two
tours. Although this problem may be viewed as a particular case of the Period Traveling
Salesman Problem, in the 2-period Balanced TSP the assumptions allow for emphasizing
on routing aspects, more than on the assignment of the customers to the various days of the
period. The paper proposes two heuristic algorithms particularly suited for the case of
Euclidean distances between the customers. Computational experiences and a comparison
between the two algorithms are also given