Ant Colony Optimization for traffic dispersion routing

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has proven to be a very powerful optimization heuristic for combinatorial optimization problems. This paper introduces a new type of ACO algorithm that will be used for routing along multiple routes in a network as opposed to optimizing a single route. Contrary to traditional routing algorithms, the Ant Dispersion Routing (ADR) algorithm has the objective of determining recommended routes for every driver in the network, in order to increase network efficiency. We present the framework for the new ADR algorithm, as well as the design of a new cost function that translates the motivations and objectives of the algorithm. The proposed approach is illustrated with a small simulation-based case study for the Singapore Expressway Network.