CSM 482

SELECTED TOPICS

Ant Colony Optimization

Prepared by:
by Dr.M.K.Jayanthi Kannan
Ant Colony Optimization

Prepared by:
 Section 1

• Introduction (Swarm intelligence)

• Natural behavior of ants
• First Algorithm: Ant System
• Improvements to Ant System
• Applications
 Swarm intelligence

• Collective system capable of accomplishing difficult

tasks in dynamic and varied environments without any
external guidance or control and with no central
coordination

• Achieving a collective performance which could not

normally be achieved by an individual acting alone

• Constituting a natural model particularly suited to

distributed problem solving

http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/courses/95590Y/notes/SI%20Lecture%203.pdf
 Inherent features

• Inherent parallelism
• Stochastic nature
• Adaptivity
• Use of positive feedback
• Autocatalytic in nature
 Natural behavior of an ant
Foraging modes

• Wander mode
• Search mode
• Return mode
• Attracted mode
• Trace mode
• Carry mode
 Natural behavior of ant

Ant Algorithms – (P.Koumoutsakos – based on notes L. Gamberdella (www.idsia.ch)

 Work to date

Problem name Authors Algorithm name Year

Traveling salesman Dorigo, Maniezzo & Colorni AS 1991
Gamberdella & Dorigo Ant-Q 1995

Dorigo & Gamberdella ACS &ACS 3 opt 1996

Stutzle & Hoos MMAS 1997

Bullnheimer, Hartl & Strauss ASrank 1997

Cordon, et al. BWAS 2000
Quadratic assignment Maniezzo, Colorni & Dorigo AS-QAP 1994

Gamberdella, Taillard & Dorigo HAS-QAP 1997

Stutzle & Hoos MMAS-QAP 1998

Maniezzo ANTS-QAP 1999

Maniezzo & Colorni AS-QAP 1994
Scheduling problems Colorni, Dorigo & Maniezzo AS-JSP 1997

Stutzle AS-SMTTP 1999

Barker et al ACS-SMTTP 1999

den Besten, Stutzle & Dorigo ACS-SMTWTP 2000

Merkle, Middenderf & Schmeck ACO-RCPS 1997
Vehicle routing Bullnheimer, Hartl & Strauss AS-VRP 1999

Gamberdella, Taillard & Agazzi HAS-VRP 1999

 Work to date
Problem name Authors Algorithm name Year

Connection-oriented Schoonderwood et al. ABC 1996

network routing White, Pagurek & Oppacher ASGA 1998

Di Caro & Dorigo AntNet-FS 1998

Bonabeau et al. ABC-smart ants 1998

Connection-less Di Caro & Dorigo AntNet & AntNet-FA 1997
network routing Subramanian, Druschel & Chen Regular ants 1997

Heusse et al. CAF 1998

van der Put & Rethkrantz ABC-backward 1998
Sequential ordering Gamberdella& Dorigo HAS-SOP 1997
Graph coloring Costa & Hertz ANTCOL 1997

Shortest common supersequence Michel & Middendorf AS_SCS 1998

Frequency assignment Maniezzo & Carbonaro ANTS-FAP 1998

Generalized assignment Ramalhinho Lourenco & Serra MMAS-GAP 1998
Multiple knapsack Leguizamon & Michalewicz AS-MKP 1999
Optical networks routing Navarro Varela & Sinclair ACO-VWP 1999
Redundancy allocation Liang & Smith ACO-RAP 1999
Constraint satisfaction Solnon Ant-P-solver 2000
 How to implement in a program

•Ants: Simple computer agents

•Move ant: Pick next component in the const. solution

•Pheromone:  k
i,j

•Memory: MK or TabuK

•Next move: Use probability to move ant

 A simple TSP example []

[]

A
B
2

[]

C
3

[]

4
D
E []

dAB =100;dBC = 60…;dDE =150

5
 Iteration 1

[A] [B]

1 2
A
B
[C]

3
C

[D] [E]

4
D 5
E
 How to build next sub-solution?

[A]

1
A
[A]
B

1
 [  ( t )] 
[  ] 

  [  ( t )] C[  ]  if j  allowed k
[A] ij ij

pij ( t )  
k
ik ik
kallowedk
 [A,D]
1
[A]

0 otherwise
1
1
D
E
 Iteration 2
[E,A] [C,B]

5 3
A
B
[B,C]

2
C

[A,D]
[D,E]

1
D 4
E
 Iteration 3

[D,E,A] [E,A,B]

4 5
A
B
[A,D,C]

1
C

[B,C,D]
[C,B,E]

2
D 3

E
 Iteration 4
[B,C,D,A] [D,E,A,B]

2 4
A
B
[E,A,B,C]

5
C

[C,B,E,D]
[A,DCE]

D 3
1
E
 Iteration 5
[C,B,E,D,A] [A,D,C,E,B]

1
3
A
B
[D,E,A,B,C]

4
C

[E,A,B,C,D]

[B,C,D,A,E]

D 5

E 2
 Path and Pheromone Evaluation
[A,D,C,E,B]
Q
 if ( i , j )  tour
L1 =300  ik, j   Lk
0

1 otherwise
[B,C,D,A,E]

L2 =450
2
[C,B,E,D,A]

 total
3 A ,B
  1
A ,B 
L3 =2602
A ,B   3
A ,B   4
A ,B   5
A ,B
[D,E,A,B,C]

L4 =280
4

[E,A,B,C,D]

L5 =420
5
End of First Run

Save Best Tour (Sequence and length)

All ants die

New ants are born

 Ant System (Ant Cycle) Dorigo [1] 1991
t = 0; NC = 0; τij(t)=c for ∆τij=0
Initialize
Place the m ants on the n nodes


 [  ij (Update t )]tabu [(s)ij ] 
  allowed k
k
Tabu list management

  
if j
pijk ( t )     [[ ( tik
)] ([t
 )]
] [ ik ] 
Choose the city j to move

ij ij

kallowed
 if j allowed
 
 to. Use probability

p ( t )    [ k ( t )] [  ]
k
k
ij ik ik
kallowedk

0
Move k-th ant to town j.

0 otherwise otherwise
Insert town j in tabu (s) k

Compute the length Lk of every ant

Update the shortest tour found

 ij ( t  n )   ij ( t )   ij
For every =edge (i,j)
Compute ij ( t  n )   ij ( t )   ij
For k:=1 to m do
Q
 if ( i , j )  tour described by tabuk
 k
i,j   Lk
0
 Q     otherwise

 if ( i , j )  tour described by tabuk

ij : ij  k
ij

 k
i, j   Lk
Yes

0
Set t = t + n; NC=NC+1; ∆τij=0 NC<NCmax
&& not

 otherwise stagn.
No

End
 Stopping Criteria

• Stagnation
• Max Iterations
 General ACO

• A stochastic construction procedure

• Probabilistically build a solution
• Iteratively adding solution components to partial
solutions
- Heuristic information
- Pheromone trail
• Reinforcement Learning reminiscence
• Modify the problem representation at each
iteration
 General ACO

• Ants work concurrently and independently

• Collective interaction via indirect
communication leads to good solutions
 Variations of Ant System

• Ant Cycle (O(NC.n3)

• Ant Density (Quantity Q)
• Ant Quantity (Quantity Q/dij)

Taken from Dorigo [1]

Basic Analysis

Taken from Dorigo [1]

Basic Analysis

Taken from Dorigo [1]

Optimal number of ants for AS

Taken from Dorigo [1]

 Versatility

• Application to ATSP is straightforward

• No modification of the basic algorithm

 Some inherent advantages

• Positive Feedback accounts for rapid discovery

of good solutions
• Distributed computation avoids premature
convergence
• The greedy heuristic helps find acceptable
solution in the early solution in the early stages
of the search process.
• The collective interaction of a population of
agents.
 Disadvantages in Ant Systems

• Slower convergence than other Heuristics

• Performed poorly for TSP problems larger
than 75 cities.
• No centralized processor to guide the AS
towards good solutions
 Improvements to AS

• Daemon actions are used to apply centralized

actions
– Local optimization procedure
– Bias the search process from global information
 Improvements to AS

• Elitist strategy

e / Lgb
( t ) if arc(i, j)  T gb
 ijgb ( t )  
0 otherwise

• ASrank
w1
 ij ( t  1 )  ( 1   ) ij ( t )   ( w  r ) ijr ( t )  w ijgb ( t )
r 1
 Improvements to AS
• ACS
– Strong elitist strategy
– Pseudo-random proportional rule

With Probability q0:


j  arg max jN k  ij ( t ) ij
i

With Probability (1- q0):
 [  ij ( t )]  [  ij ] 
  [  ( t )]  [  ]  if j  allowed k

pij ( t )  
k
ik ik
kallowedk


0 otherwise
 Improvements to AS

• ACS (Pheromone update)

 ij ( t  1 )  ( 1   ) ij ( t )   ijbest ( t )

– Update pheromone trail while building the solution

– Ants eat pheromone on the trail
– Local search added before pheromone update
 Improvements to AS

• MMAS

 min   ij   max
– High exploration at the beginning
– Only best ant can add pheromone
– Sometimes uses local search to improve its
performance
 Dynamic Optimization Problems

• ABC (circuit switched networks)

• AntNet (routing in packet-switched networks)

 Applications

• Traveling Salesman Problem

• Quadratic Assignment Problem
• Network Model Problem
• Vehicle routing
 Section II

 Traveling Salesman Problem

 Quadrature Assignment Problem

Mr. Fadi Elmasri

Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)

TSP PROBLEM : Given N cities, and a distance function d between

cities, find a tour that:

1. Goes through every city once and only once

2. Minimizes the total distance.

• Problem is NP-hard

• Classical combinatorial
optimization problem to
test.
ACO for the Traveling Salesman Problem

The TSP is a very important problem in the context of

Ant Colony Optimization because it is the problem to
which the original AS was first applied, and it has later
often been used as a benchmark to test a new idea
and algorithmic variants.

The TSP was chosen for many reasons:

• It is a problem to which the ant colony metaphor

• It is one of the most studied NP-hard problems in the combinatorial optimization
• it is very easily to explain. So that the algorithm behavior is not obscured by
too many technicalities.
Search Space

Discrete Graph

To each edge is associated a static value

returned by an heuristic function  (r,s)
based on the edge-cost

Each edge of the graph is augmented with a

pheromone trail  (r,s) deposited by ants.

Pheromone is dynamic and it is learned at run-ime

 Ant Systems (AS)

Ant Systems for TSP

Graph (N,E): where N = cities/nodes, E = edges

d ij = the tour cost from city i to city j (edge weight)

Ant move from one city i to the next j with some transition probability.

B
A

C
Ant Systems Algorithm for TSP
Initialize

Place each ant in a randomly chosen city

For Each Ant

Choose NextCity(For Each Ant)

yes more cities

to visit

No

Return to the initial cities

Update pheromone level using the tour cost for each ant

No
Stopping
criteria

yes

Print Best tour

Rules for Transition Probability

1. Whether or not a city has been visited

Use of a memory(tabu list): J ik : set of all cities that are to be visited

2. N ij = 1 d ijvisibility:Heuristic desirability of choosing city j when in city i.

3.Pheromone trail: Tij (t ) This is a global type of information

Transition probability for ant k to go from city i to city j while building its route.

a = 0: closest cities are selected

 Pheromone trail and heuristic function:
are they useful?

Comparison between ACS standard, ACS with no heuristic (i.e., we set B=0), and ACS in which ants
neither sense nor deposit pheromone. Problem: Oliver30. Averaged over 30 trials, 10,000/m iterations per trial.
Trail pheromone in AS

After the completion of a tour, each ant lays some pheromone

 K ij (t ) for each edge that it has used. depends on how well the ant
has performed.

Trail pheromone decay =

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)

Dorigo & Gambardella introduced four modifications in AS :

1.a different transition rule,

2.Local/global pheromone trail updates,

3.use of local updates of pheromone trail to favor exploration

4.a candidate list to restrict the choice of the next city to visit.
ACS : Ant Colony System for TSP
ACO State Transition Rule

Next city is chosen between the not visited cities according to a

probabilistic rule

Exploitation: the best edge is chosen

Exploration: each of the edges in proportion to its value
ACS State Transition Rule : Formulae
 ACS State Transition Rule : example

 ( A, B)  150  ( A, B)  1 / 10
 ( A, B)  35  ( A, B)  1 / 7
 ( A, B)  90  ( A, B)  1 / 15

•with probability q0 exploitation

(Edge AB = 15)

•with probability (1- q0 )exploration

AB with probability 15/26
AC with probability 5/26
AD with probability 6/26
ACS Local Trail Updating

… similar to evaporation
 ACS Global Trail Updating

At the end of each iteration the best ant is allowed to

reinforce its tour by depositing additional pheromone
inversely proportional to the length of the tour
Effect of the Local Rule

Local rule: learnt desirability of edges changes

dynamically
Local update rule makes the edge pheromone level
diminish.
Visited edges are less & less attractive as they are
visited by the various ants.

Favors exploration of not yet visited edges.

This helps in shuffling the
cities so that cities visited early in one ants tours are
being
visited later in another ants tour.
ACO vs AS

Pheromone trail update

Deposit pheromone after completing a tour in AS
Here in ACO only the ant that generated the best tour from the beginning
of the trial is allowed to globally update the concentrations of pheromone
on the branches (ants search at the vicinity of the best tour so far)

In AS pheromone trail update applied to all edges

Here in ACO the global pheromone trail update is applied only to the
best tour since trial began.
ACO : Candidate List

Use of a candidate list

A list of preferred cities to visit: instead of
examining all cities, unvisited cities are examined first.

Cities are ordered by increasing distance & list is scanned sequentially.

• Choice of next city from those in the candidate list.

• Other cities only if all the cities in the list have been visited.
Performance

• Algorithm found best solutions on small problems

(75 city)
• On larger problems converged to good solutions –
but not the best
• On “static” problems like TSP hard to beat specialist
algorithms
• Ants are “dynamic” optimizers – should we even
expect good performance on static problems
• Coupling ant with local optimizers gave world
class results….
 Quadratic Assignment Problem(QAP)

Problem is:
• Assign n activities to n locations (campus and mall
layout).

• D= di , j  , d i , j , distance from location i to location j

n,n

• F= f 
h ,k n ,n , f i , j ,flow from activity h to activity k

• Assignment is permutatio 
• Minimize: n
C ( )   d ij f (i ) ( j )
i , j 1
• It’s NP hard
QAP Example

Locations B
Facilities
? C

biggest flow: A - B

How to assign facilities to locations ?

A C

B C A B

Higher cost Lower cost

SIMPLIFIED CRAFT (QAP)

Simplification Assume all departments have equal size

Notation d i , j distance between locations i and j
f k ,h travel frequency between departments k and h
X i ,k 1 if department k is assigned to location i
0 otherwise

Example 1 2
4 2 Location

3 4
1 3 Department („Facility“)

Distance * di, j Frequency* f k ,h

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
1 - 1 1 2 1 - 1 3 2
2 1 - 2 1 2 2 - 0 1
3 1 2 - 1 3 1 4 - 0
4 2 1 1 - 4 3 1 1 -
Ant System (AS-QAP)

Constructive method:
step 1: choose a facility j

step 2: assign it to a location i

Characteristics:
– each ant leaves trace (pheromone) on the chosen couplings (i,j)
– assignment depends on the probability (function of pheromone trail and a
heuristic information)

– already coupled locations and facilities are inhibited (Tabu list)

 AS-QAP Heuristic information

Distance and Flow Potentials

 0 1 2 3 6  0 60 50 10  120
1 0 4 5  10 60 0 30 20 110
Dij     Di    Fij   Fi   
 2 4 0 6 12 50 30 0 50 130
       
 3 5 6 0 14 10 20 50 0 80 

The coupling Matrix:

720 1200 1440 1680
660 1100 1320 1540 s11  f1  d1  720
S 
780 1300 1560 1820 s 34  f 3  d 4  960
 
 480 800 960 1120 

Ants choose the location according to the heuristic desirability “Potential goodness”
1
 ij 
sij
AS-QAP Constructing the Solution

 The facilities are ranked in decreasing order of the flow potentials

 Ant k assigns the facility i to location j with the probability given by:

 [ (t )] [ ]
pijk (t )   if j  N ik
ij ij

 lNik ij
 
[ (t )] [ ij ]
where k is the feasible Neighborhood of node i
N i

When Ant k choose to assign facility j to location i

it leave a substance, called trace “pheromone” on
the coupling (i,j)

 Repeated until the entire assignment is found

AS-QAP Pheromone Update

 Pheromone trail update to all couplings:

m
 ij (t  1)   . ij (t )    ijk
k 1

 ijk is the amount of pheromone ant k puts on the coupling (i,j)

Q
 if facility i is assigned to location j in the solution of ant k
kij   Jk
 0 otherwise

Jk  the objective function v alue

Q...the amount of pheromone deposited by ant k

Hybrid Ant System For The QAP

Constructive algorithms often result in a poor solution quality

compared to local search algorithms.

Repeating local searches from randomly generated initial

solution results for most problems in a considerable gap to
optimal soultion

Hybrid algorithms combining solution constructed by (artificial)

ant “probabilistic constructive” with local search algorithms yield
significantly improved solution.
Hybrid Ant System For The QAP (HAS-QAP)

 HAS-QAP uses of the pheromone trails in a non-standard way.

used to modify an existing solution,

 improve the ant’s solution using the local search algorithm.

 Intensification and diversification mechanisms.

 Hybrid Ant System For The QAP (HAS-QAP)

Generate m initial solutions, each one associated to one ant

Initialise the pheromone trail
For Imax iterations repeat
For each ant k = 1,..., m do
Modify ant k;s solution using the pheromone trail
Apply a local search to the modified solution
new starting solution to ant k using an intensification mechanism
End For
Update the pheromone trail
Apply a diversification mechanism
End For
 HAS-QAP Intensification& diversification mechanisms
The intensification mechanism is activated when the best solution produced by the
search so far has been improved.

The diversification mechanism is activated if during the last S iterations no

improvement to the best generated solution is detected.

diversification

Intensification
HAS-QAP algorithms Performance

Comparisons with some of the best heuristics for the QAP have shown that
HAS-QAP is among the best as far as real world, and structured problems are
concerned.

The only competitor was shown to genetic-hybrid algorithm.

On random, and unstructured problems the performance of HAS-QAP was

less competitive and tabu searches are still the best methods.

So far, the most interesting applications of ant colony optimization were
limited to travelling salesman problems and quadratic assignment problems..
 Section III

 Network Routing

 Vehicle Routing

 Conclusions

Mr. Ahmad Elshamli

 ROUTING IN COMM. NETWORKS

Routing task is performed by Routers.

Routers use “Routing Tables” to direct the data.
If your destination is node 5
next node to 3
4
6

3 1

5 2
2
 ROUTING IN COMM. NETWORKS

Problem statement
• Dynamic Routing
At any moment the pathway of a message must be
as small as possible. (Traffic conditions and the
structure of the network are constantly changing)
• Load balancing
Distribute the changing load over the system and
minimize lost calls.
 ROUTING IN COMM. NETWORKS

Objective:

Minimize: Lost calls by avoiding congestion,

Minimize: Pathway

Dynamic Optimization Problem

+
Multi-Objectives Optimization Problem
 ROUTING IN COMM. NETWORKS

Traditional way:
“Central Controllers”
Disadvantage:
• Communication overhead.
• Fault tolerance ~ Controller Failure.
• Scalability
• Dynamic ~ Uncertainty
• Authority.
 Algorithm I
Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication
networks
(Schoonderwoerd, R. -1996)
• Network has n nodes.
• Each node has its Routing Table (pheromone table) {Ri[n-1][k]}
• Initialize: equilibrium Routing table (all nodes have the same value
or normalized random values)
• Each node lunches {n-1} ants (agents) each to different destination.
• Each ant select its next hop node proportionally to goodness of
each neighbor node
• routing table of the node that just the ant arrived to is updated as
follows:

Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Algorithm I (cont.)

Increase the probability of the visited link by:

 old  

1  
Decrease the probability of the others by :
 old

1  

 1 
Where   f  
 age 
Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Algorithm I (cont.)
Example: Pheromone Table @ NODE 6
Next node
1 3 4 7 8
1 0.850 0.100 0.009 0.001 0.090
2 0.045 0.100 0.520 0.325 0.010
7 Destination 3 0.020 0.925 0.045 0.008 0.002
5 Nodes 4 0.004 0.100 0.800 0.090 0.006
5 0.010 0.095 0.470 0.410 0.015
7 0.005 0.003 0.020 0.948 0.024
2 8 0.015 0.005 0.002 0.023 0.955
4
6

Node8 Node1
8

3
Node3

1
Node7

Node4

Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Algorithm I (cont.)
 old  

Example: 1  
Routing table @ node 1
Next node Next node
2 3 2 3
Destination 3 0.50 0.50 Destination 3 0.40 0.60
node 2 0.50 0.50 node 2 0.50 0.50
4 0.50 0.50 4 0.50 0.50

 old

2 1  

4
1

3
  0.25

Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Algorithm I (cont.)

Mean Std. Dev.

Without load balancing 12.53% 2.04%
mobile agent 4.41% 0.85%
Ants 2.72% 1.24%

The mean percentages (ten experiments each) and standard

deviations of call failures for changed call probabilities

Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Algorithm II
AntNet
(Di Caro & Dorigo - 1997)

r+, r- r+, r-
B-ANT B-ANT B-ANT

1 2 3
F-ANT F-ANT
F-ANT

F-Ants also measure the quality of the trip (# nodes, Node Statistics)

VERY GOOD RESULTS, But it Generates bigger consumption

imp
of the network resources.

Reference: Schoonderwoerd, R. (1996) “Ant-based load balancing in telecommunication networks” Adapt. Behav. 5, 169-207
 Vehicle Routing Problem with Time
Windows (VRPTW)

N customers are to be visited by K vehicles

Given
• Depots (number, location)
• Vehicles (capacity, costs, time to leave, time on
road..)
• Customers (demands,time windows, priority,...)
• Route Information (maximum route time or distance,
cost on the route)
 Vehicle Routing Problem with Time
Windows (VRPTW)

Objective Functions to Minimize

• Total travel distance
• Total travel time
• Number of vehicles

Subject to:
• Vehicles ( # ,Capacity,time on road,trip length)
• Depots (Numbers)
• Customers (Demands,time windows)
 Vehicle Routing Problem with Time
Windows (VRPTW)

Relation with TSP?! [10:00-11:15]

[11:00-11:30]

[8:00-9:00]

[10:00-11:45]

[8:30-10:30]

[8:00-12:30]
[8:15-9:30]

Depots
Depot

[10:15-11:45]
 VRP “Simple Algorithm”
- Place ants on depots (Depots # = Vehicle #).

- Probabilistic choice
~ (1/distance, di, Q)
~ amount of pheromone

- If all unvisited customer lead to a unfeasible solution:

Select depot as your next customer.

- Improve by local search.

- Only best ants update pheromone trial.

 Multiple ACS For VRPTW

 gb MAC-VRPTW Multi-objectives

ACS-VEI ACS-TIME
Single objective
(Min. Vehicles number) (Min. Travel time)

 ACS VEI
 ACS TIME

Gambardella L.M., Taillard 12. (1999), “Multiple ant colony system for VRPTW”
 Parallel implementation

• Parallelism at the level of ants.

– Ants works in parallel to find a solution.
• Parallelism at the level of data.
– Ants working for sub-problems
• Functional Parallelism.
– Ant_generation_activity()
– Pheromone_evaporation() Good choice
– Daemons_actions()
 Similarities with other Opt. Technique

• Populations,Elitism ~ GA
• Probabilistic,RANDOM ~ GRASP
• Constructive ~ GRASP
• Heuristic info, Memory ~ TS
 Design Choices

• Number of ants.
• Balance of exploration and exploitation
• Combination with other heuristics techniques
• When are pheromones updated?
• Which ants should update the pheromone.?
• Termination Criteria
 Ongoing Projects
• DYVO: ACO for vehicle routing
• MOSCA: Dynamic and time dependent VRP
• Ant@ptima: Research applications
 Conclusions
• ACO is a recently proposed metaheuristic approach
for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems.
• Artificial ants implement a randomized construction
heuristic which makes probabilistic decisions.
• The a cumulated search experience is taken into
account by the adaptation of the pheromone trail.
• ACO Shows great performance with the “ill-
structured” problems like network routing.
• In ACO Local search is extremely important to obtain
good results.
 References
• Dorigo M. and G. Di Caro (1999). The Ant Colony Optimization Meta-Heuristic. In D. Corne, M.
Dorigo and F. Glover, editors, New Ideas in Optimization, McGraw-Hill, 11-32.
• M. Dorigo and L. M. Gambardella. Ant colonies for the traveling salesman problem. BioSystems,
43:73–81, 1997.
• M. Dorigo and L. M. Gambardella. Ant Colony System: A cooperative learning approach to the
traveling salesman problem. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 1(1):53–66, 1997.
• G. Di Caro and M. Dorigo. Mobile agents for adaptive routing. In H. El-Rewini, editor, Proceedings
of the 31st International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-31), pages 74–83. IEEE
Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1998.
• M. Dorigo, V. Maniezzo, and A. Colorni. The Ant System: An autocatalytic optimizing process.
Technical Report 91-016 Revised, Dipartimento di Elettronica,Politecnico di Milano, Italy, 1991.
• L. M. Gambardella, ` E. D. Taillard, and G. Agazzi. MACS-VRPTW: A multiple ant colony system
for vehicle routing problems with time windows. In D. Corne, M. Dorigo, and F. Glover, editors,
New Ideas in Optimization, pages 63–76. McGraw Hill, London, UK, 1999.
• L. M. Gambardella, ` E. D. Taillard, and M. Dorigo. Ant colonies for the quadratic assignment
problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society,50(2):167–176, 1999.
• V. Maniezzo and A. Colorni. The Ant System applied to the quadratic assignment problem. IEEE
Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, 11(5):769–778, 1999.
• Gambardella L. M., E. Taillard and M. Dorigo (1999). Ant Colonies for the Quadratic
Assignment Problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 50:167-176.
Thank you