Heuristic approaches for a TSP variant: The automatic meter reading shortest tour problem

Abstract

This paper addresses the automatic meter reading shortest tour problem (AMRSTP), a variant of the traveling salesman problem (TSP). The AMRSTP can be formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP), but solving for the exact solution is impractical. Therefore, two heuristic approaches, a clustering-based algorithm and a convex hull-based algorithm, are proposed to find near-optimal feasible solutions. The algorithms are tested on various datasets, and the numerical results show that both heuristic algorithms perform effectively and efficiently. © 2007 by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.