How to define a time-distance function for the Traveling Salesman algorithm

Question

I wrote a program that solves the traveling salesman problem minimizing the travel distance. Now I'm triyng to create a weight function that takes distance and time and outputs a value I can use instead of the distance for the TSP. My idea is to let the user input a percentage (like 70%) and weight the distance and time somehow.

The problem is I've no idea how to compare distance in meters with time in seconds.

Distance is converted to time using speed. For a fixed speed V, distance D will be covered in D/V time units — Ivaylo Strandjev, Sep 29 '14 at 15:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '14 at 19:56

One way to go is to specify a generalized cost function, i.e. you determine the costs (in monetary units) for one distance unit AND the costs for one time unit. For example, if your traveling salesman is a real traveling salesman then costs_per_time_unit could be approximated with wage_per_time_unit and cost_per_distance_unit with fuel_cost_per_distance_unit + ...

This yields c_generalized = cost_per_time_unit * time + cost_per_distance_unit * distance and you are done.

How to define a time-distance function for the Traveling Salesman algorithm

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