Abstract: In order to maintain the characteristics of the Lévy flight mechanism and the preference of the random walk strategy in the basic cuckoo search algorithm,this paper proposed a cuckoo search algorithm based on directional mutation to solve the distribution routing problem.Firstly,the quick sort method is used to map each dimensional element of a real-coded individual into the city numberthus to establish the connection between the algorithm and the problem mo-del.Then the neighboring-region search method is used to determine the city access order.In other words,it is to find the neighboring cities of the current city by the distance between cities so as to enhance the convergence speed of the algorithm.Meanwhile,in the algorithm local search mechanism,the average fitness function is used to divide the algorithm into two subgroups.Then the corresponding directional mutating mechanism is adopted according to different subgroups,so that the algorithm has purpose to search and the local search ability of the algorithm is enhanced.The experimental results of solution to the test case of the standard TSP database show that the deviation rate of the proposed algorithm has been significantly reduced in each case.The deviation rate of the algorithm is smaller than that of other comparison algorithms in both the optimal value and the average value,and its solution effect is better in the path planning problem.

Key words: Cuckoo search algorithm, Local search method, Mutation strategy, Path planning problem, Quick sort method