Quantum Inspired General Variable Neighborhood Search (qGVNS) for Dynamic Garbage Collection

General Variable Neighborhood Search (GVNS) is a well known and widely used 1 metaheuristic for efficiently solving many NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. Quantum 2 General Variable Neighborhood Search (qGVNS) is a novel, quantum inspired extension of the 3 conventional GVNS. Its quantum nature derives from the fact that it takes advantage and incorporates 4 tools and techniques from the field of quantum computation. Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a 5 well known NP-Hard problem which has broadly been used for modelling many real life routing 6 cases. As a consequence, TSP can be used as a basis for modelling and finding routes for Geographical 7 Systems (GPS). In this paper, we examine the potential use of this method for the GPS system of 8 garbage trucks. Specifically, we provide a thorough presentation of our method accompanied with 9 extensive computational results. The experimental data accumulated on a plethora of symmetric TSP 10 instances (symmetric in order to faithfully simulate GPS problems), which are shown in a series of 11 figures and tables, allow us to conclude that the novel qGVNS algorithm can provide an efficient 12 solution for this type of geographical problems. 13