Discrete particle swarm optimization for the orienteering problem

Discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) is gaining popularity in the area of combinatorial optimization in the recent past due to its simplicity in coding and consistency in performance. A DPSO algorithm has been developed for orienteering problem (OP) which has been shown to have many practical applications. It uses reduced variable neighborhood search as a local search tool. The DPSO algorithm was compared with ten heuristic models from the literature using benchmark problems. The results show that the DPSO algorithm is a robust algorithm that can optimally solve the well known OP test problems.