The shortest path finding algorithm using neural network

Recently neural networks leave been proposed as new computational tools for solving constrained optimization problems because of its computational power. In this paper, the shortest path finding algorithm is proposed by rising a Hopfield type neural network. In order to design a Hopfield type neural network, an energy function must be defined at first. To obtain this energy function, the concept of a vector-represented network is introduced to describe the connected path. Through computer simulations, it will be shown that the proposed algorithm works very well in many cases. The local minima problem of a Hopfield type neural network is discussed.