Open Street allows you to find the shortest path through a given city list. This problem of optimization is commonly called « problem of the commercial traveler » by the mathematicians. It is known to be an NP-complete problem, ie there is currently no algorithm that allows an exact resolution in a finite time. This explains why, beyond a dozen points, the «brute force» algorithms are incapable of providing a solution within a reasonable time.
For information, the table below describes the number of possible routes according to the number of places of passage. For each of these possibilities, a «brute force» algorithm should sum the total distance between each of the points. It soon becomes clear that a number of possibilities with 2568 zeros is far too large to be processed by even the most powerful computers in the world as they are used at NASA or weather forecasts.
| Rendez-vous points | Possibilities |
| 20 | 2,43 1018 |
| 50 | 3,04 1064 |
| 100 | 9,33 10157 |
| 200 | 7,88 10375 |
| 1000 | 4,02 102567 |
Thus, we do not use an algorithm that would try to compare all the possible paths, and our software of resolution was developed by us. Within seconds, Open Street can find approximate solutions of the order of 99% for optimization cases up to several hundred points. The proposed solutions will therefore generate substantial savings for players from all sectors, whose activity requires road trips.
The real strength of Open Street is to succeed in quickly giving reliable results for a complex mathematical problem.
