Finding the shortest possible route is generally called the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), a well-known NPhard problem in combinatorial optimization and the TSP has been intensively studied in operations research and theoretical computer science since the problem was first formulated as a mathematical problem in 1930.The goal of the TSP is to find the shortest path that visits all locations in a given list exactly once and then returns to the starting location.
The importance of TSP arises from the variety of its applications. Typical applications may include vehicle routing, computer wiring, and job sequencing.