Simulated Annealing Demonstration

Simulated Annealing Demonstration is a Java application that demonstrates the Simulated Annealing algorithm with an attack on the "traveling salesman" problem. It was developed to help solve large combinatorial optimization problems. It is based on probabilistic methods that avoid being stuck at local (non-global) minima. It has proven to be a simple but powerful method for large-scale combinatorial optimization. For practical purposes, simulated annealing has solved the famous traveling salesman problem. Simulated annealing finds a very good approximation to the shortest path out of the huge number of all possible paths. Simulated Annealing mimics on a computer the natural process by which crystal lattices of glass or metal relax when heated. The molecules of hot glass or metal are free to move about. Temperature is an average of the thermal energy in each molecule of an object.