Algoritmo treansgenético na solução do problema do Caixeiro Viajante

The Traveling Purchaser Problem is a variant of the Traveling Salesman Problem, where there is a set of markets and a set of products. Each product is available on a subset of markets and its unit cost depends on the market where it is available. The objective is to buy all the products, departing and returning to a domicile, at the least possible cost defined as the summation of the weights of the edges in the tour and the cost paid to acquire the products. A Transgenetic Algorithm, an evolutionary algorithm with basis on endosymbiosis, is applied to the Capacited and Uncapacited versions of this problem. Evolution in Transgenetic Algorithms is simulated with the interaction and information sharing between populations of individuals from distinct species. The computational results show that this is a very effective approach for the TPP regarding solution quality and runtime. Seventeen and nine new best results are presented for instances of the capacited and uncapacited versions, respectively