Let's explore recombination and mutation for GA in TSP (AIMA ch. 4)
Details
Applying genetic algorithms to TSP is non-trivial, since careless recombination and mutation will result in inviable offspring; the Larrañaga paper talks about some different methods for recombining parents and mutating offspring that result in valid tours.
Each of the recombination operators has slightly different properties:
Partially-mapped crossover Order-crossover Position-based crossover Edge-recombination crossover &c. and likewise with the mutation operators:
Displacement mutation Exchange mutation Insertion mutation &c. The goal this week is to implement and compare as many of the recombination and mutation operators as possible.