Matroid Intersection and its application to a Multiple Depot, Multiple TSP

This paper extends the Held-Karp’s lower bound available for a single Travelling Salesman Problem to the following symmetric Multiple Depot, Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem (MDMTSP): Given k salesman that start at different depts, k terminals and n destinations, the problem is to choose paths for each of the salesmen so that (1) each vehicle starts at its respective depot, visits atleast one destination and reaches any one of the terminals not visited by other vehicles, (2) each destination is visited by exactly one vehicle and (3) the cost of the paths is a minimum among all possible paths for the salesmen.