solving the multiple traveling salesman problem by a novel meta-heuristic algorithm

the multiple traveling salesman problem (mtsp) is a generalization of the famous traveling salesman problem (tsp), where more than one salesman is used in the solution. although the mtsp is a typical kind of computationally complex combinatorial optimization problem, it can be extended to a wide variety of routing problems. this paper presents an efficient and evolutionary optimization algorithm which has been developed through combining modified imperialist competitive algorithm and lin-kernigan algorithm (mica) in order to solve the mtsp.  in the proposed algorithm, an absorption function and several local search algorithms as a revolution operator are used. the performance of our algorithm was tested on several mtsp benchmark problems and the results confirmed that the mica performs well and is quite competitive with other meta-heuristic algorithms.