This paper presents the performances of different types of optimization techniques used in artificial intelligence (AI), these are Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Improved Particle Swarm Optimization with a new operator (IPSO), Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithms (SFLA) and modified shuffled frog leaping algorithm by using a crossover and mutation operators. They were used to solve the traveling salesman problem (TSP) which is one of the popular and classical route planning problems of research and it is considered  as one of the widely known of combinatorial optimization. Combinatorial optimization problems are usually simple to state but very difficult to solve. ACO, PSO, and SFLA are intelligent meta-heuristic optimization algorithms with strong ability to analyze the optimization problems and find the optimal solution. They were tested on benchmark problems from TSPLIB and the test results were compared with each other.Keywords: Ant colony optimization, shuffled frog leaping algorithms, travelling salesman problem, improved particle swarm optimization