Question: How can we find a shortest closed walk passing through all vertices?

A Hamiltonian walk on a connected graph is a closed walk of minimal length which visits every vertex of a graph (and may visit vertices and edges multiple times). (See https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HamiltonianWalk.html)

Please note that there is a distinction between a Hamiltonian walk and a Hamiltonian cycle. Any graph can have a Hamiltonian walk, but not necessarily a Hamiltonian cycle.  The Hamiltonian number h(n) of a connected G is the length of a Hamiltonian walk. 

For example, let's consider the graph FriendshipGraph(2).

g:=GraphTheory[SpecialGraphs]:-FriendshipGraph(2);
DrawGraph(g)

Then its Hamiltonian number is 6.  A Hamiltonian walk is as shown in the following picture.

PS: After being reminded by others, I learned that a method in the following post seems to work, but I don't understand why it works for now. 

• https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/43731/travelling-salesman-which-can-repeat-cities

It seems that the correctness of this transformation requires rigorous proof.