  This paper presents a novel and efficient heuristic framework for
approximating the solutions to the multiple traveling salesmen problem (m-TSP)
and other variants on the TSP. The approach adopted in this paper is an
extension of the Maximum-Entropy-Principle (MEP) and the Deterministic
Annealing (DA) algorithm. The framework is presented as a general tool that can
be suitably adapted to a number of variants on the basic TSP. Additionally,
unlike most other heuristics for the TSP, the framework presented in this paper
is independent of the edges defined between any two pairs of nodes. This makes
the algorithm particularly suited for variants such as the close-enough
traveling salesman problem (CETSP) which are challenging due to added
computational complexity. The examples presented in this paper illustrate the
effectiveness of this new framework for use in TSP and many variants thereof.
