Calculating The Shortest Route: Intelligent "Goo"

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Link: Shrinking Blob Computes Traveling Salesman Solutions | MIT Technology Review

 

A video of the goo in action:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9VkFehN1jcw

 

...The results are good but not perfect. The created 20 different scenarios of 20 cities and ran the blob 6 times on each. They then compared the blob’s shortest route with the actual shortest path found by brute force. Jones and Adamatzky say that if this shortest route is of length 1, the intelligent blob found tours with a mean best tour length of 1.04, mean average tour length of 1.07 and mean worst tour length of 1.09...