Hi all,
in grass7 addons [0], there is a new version of v.net.salesman with
optional tour optimization. The current algorithm to find the shortest
tour is heuristic and often does not find the optimal tour for more
than 10 nodes to visit. The optimization methods available are
bootstrapping and a genetic algorithm, both of which provide a better
result (shorter tour) than the original method. Both optimization
methods are rather crude an brute force, but better than nothing and
sometimes get close to the known optimal tour for up to 1000 nodes.
Testing welcome!
Markus M
[0] https://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass-addons/grass7/vector/v.net.salesman.opt/