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Gamesourcing: an unconventional tool to assist the solution of the traveling salesman problem

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Abstract

This paper presents an approach to solve the variant of the well-known Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) by using a gamesourcing approach. In contemporary literature is TSP solved by wide spectra of modern as well as classical computational methods. We would like to point out the possibility to solve such problems by computer game plying that is called a gamesourcing. Gamesourcing can be understood as a version of game-driven crowdsourcing. The main part and contribution of this paper is a demonstration of gamesourcing use in the game called Labyrinth that reflects TSP structure. The game has a form of a maze-labyrinth that enables players to move through it like the Ant Colony Optimization. The playing of the Labyrinth, thus, by playing, solves the problem. The performance of the “human ant-like system” is then evaluated and compared against some well-known versions of ACO. As we believe, our experiments suggest that this approach can serve as an alternative way that employs gamesourcing to assist a combinatorial optimizer in achieving better results on a well-known NP-hard optimization problem.

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Notes

  1. http://www.seaheroquest.com/.

  2. http://biogames.ee.ucla.edu/.

  3. https://www.operationwardiary.org/.

  4. https://www.higgshunters.org/.

  5. http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/ai/projects/astrodrone_scientific.html.

  6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.bukacek.soma_tictactoe.

  7. https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/644067/Applying-Ant-Colony-Optimization-Algorithms-to-Sol.

  8. Available at https://www.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/groups/comopt/software/TSPLIB95/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the internal Grant SGS SP2020/78 of VSB-TU Ostrava.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Ivan Zelinka

  2. Department of Computer Science, FEI, VSB Technical University of Ostrava, Tr. 17. Listopadu 15, Ostrava, Czech Republic

    Ivan Zelinka

  3. Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India

    Swagatam Das

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Zelinka, I., Das, S. Gamesourcing: an unconventional tool to assist the solution of the traveling salesman problem. Nat Comput 21, 347–357 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-020-09817-z

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