Maryam Rahbari - Department of Mathematics, Shahrood University of Technology, University Blvd., Shahrood, Iran
Jafar Fathali - Department of Mathematics, Shahrood University of Technology, University Blvd., Shahrood, Iran
Reza Mortazavi - Department of Mathematics, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran

Let a graph G = (V;E) be given. In the path center problem we want to find a path P in G such that the maximum weighted distance of P to every vertex in V is minimized. In this paper a genetic algorithm and ahybrid of genetic and ant colony algorithms are presented for the path center problem. Some test problems are examined to compare the algorithms. The results show that for almost all examples the hybrid method results better solutions than genetic algorithm.

Genetic algorithm, Ant colony, Location theory, Path center, Hybrid algorithm