Title :
Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents
Author :
Dorigo, Marco ; Maniezzo, Vittorio ; Colorni, Alberto
Author_Institution :
Univ. Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
fDate :
2/1/1996 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
An analogy with the way ant colonies function has suggested the definition of a new computational paradigm, which we call ant system (AS). We propose it as a viable new approach to stochastic combinatorial optimization. The main characteristics of this model are positive feedback, distributed computation, and the use of a constructive greedy heuristic. Positive feedback accounts for rapid discovery of good solutions, distributed computation avoids premature convergence, and the greedy heuristic helps find acceptable solutions in the early stages of the search process. We apply the proposed methodology to the classical traveling salesman problem (TSP), and report simulation results. We also discuss parameter selection and the early setups of the model, and compare it with tabu search and simulated annealing using TSP. To demonstrate the robustness of the approach, we show how the ant system (AS) can be applied to other optimization problems like the asymmetric traveling salesman, the quadratic assignment and the job-shop scheduling. Finally we discuss the salient characteristics-global data structure revision, distributed communication and probabilistic transitions of the AS
Keywords :
feedback; optimisation; robust control; search problems; simulated annealing; stochastic programming; travelling salesman problems; ant colonies; ant system; computational paradigm; constructive greedy heuristic; cooperating agents; distributed communication; distributed computation; global data structure revision; job-shop scheduling; optimization; parameter selection; positive feedback; probabilistic transitions; quadratic assignment; simulated annealing; stochastic combinatorial optimization; tabu search; traveling salesman problem; Ant colony optimization; Artificial intelligence; Computational modeling; Data structures; Distributed computing; Feedback; Intelligent robots; Robustness; Simulated annealing; Traveling salesman problems;
Journal_Title :
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/3477.484436