Efficient special case algorithms for the n-line planar traveling salesman problem

The traveling salesman problem, path, or cycle is NP-complete. All known exact solutions to this problem are exponential. In the N-line planar traveling salesman problem the points are on N lines in the plane. In this paper, simple and efficient low-degree polynomial solutions are given to some N-line (N = 2, 3) planar traveling salesman problems using dynamic programming. Such problems arise in practical applications, for example, connecting nets in printed circuits.