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.

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, ...

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 Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 66, No. 4 (APRIL 2015), pp. 615-626 (12 pages) We introduce and study the Travelling Salesman Problem with Multiple Time Windows and Hotel ...

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 ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract We consider partitioning algorithms for the approximate solution of large instances of the traveling-salesman problem in the plane. These ...

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 ...