Complex social behaviours of ants can provide models for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Ant Colony Optimization is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems. This paper presents an overview of this rapidly growing field, from its theoretical inception to practical applications.
Complex social behaviours of ants can provide models for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Ant Colony Optimization is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems. This paper presents an overview of this rapidly growing field, from its theoretical inception to practical applications.
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Complex social behaviours of ants can provide models for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Ant Colony Optimization is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems. This paper presents an overview of this rapidly growing field, from its theoretical inception to practical applications.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Ant Colony Optimization - A Novel Approach to Solve NP-Hard Problems
Many of numerous species of insects that
live in colonies manifest group integration and division of labour. Swarm intelligence are typically made up of a population of Keywords: Ant colony, Swarm, TSP simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. Abstract Although there is normally no centralized control structure dictating how individual The complex social behaviours of ants have agents should behave, local interactions been much studied, and computer scientists between such agents often lead to the are now finding that these behaviour patterns emergence of global behaviour. can provide models for solving difficult The rest of the paper is divided as follows: combinatorial optimization problems. The Sections 1.2 and 1.3 discuss the Ant attempt to develop algorithms inspired by Colony and other Social Insect Behaviour one aspect of ant behavior, the ability to find approaches. Section 2 gives a theoretical shortest paths, has become the field of ant overview and an example of ACO. Variants colony optimization (ACO). The ant colony of ACO are briefly explained in Section 3. optimization algorithm (ACO), introduced by In Section 4, the application aspects of Marco Dorigo, in the year 1992, is a ACO to real world problems is discussed probabilistic technique for solving with emphasis on the TSP. The next section computational problems which can be gives the merits and demerits of ACO. reduced to finding good paths through Finally the conclusion and references are graphs. This paper presents an overview of given. this rapidly growing field, from its theoretical inception to practical 1.2 Ant Colonies applications, including descriptions of many available ACO algorithms and their various Ant Communication is accomplished applications to solve NP-Hard Problems. In primarily through chemicals called this paper, we also discuss the Travelling pheromones. Ants communicate to one Salesman Problem. another by laying down pheromones along their trails. Other ants perceive the presence 1. Introduction. of pheromone and tend to follow paths 1.1 Behaviour of Social Animals where pheromone concentration is higher. Over time, however, the pheromone trail Insects are the most diverse group of starts to evaporate, thus reducing its animals on the earth. Many insects possess attractive strength. The more time it takes very sensitive organs of perception. for an ant to travel down the path and back perception. Swarm Intelligence(SI) is an again, the more time the pheromones have artificial technique based on the study of to evaporate. A short path gets marched collective, self-organized systems. SI systems over faster, and thus the pheromone density remains high as it is laid on the path as fast as it can evaporate. The distinctive behaviour of ants has been extensively studied and has inspired a number of methods and techniques among which the most successful is the general purpose optimization technique known as Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). ACO exploits a similar mechanism similar to that of the foraging behaviour of some ant species. From the early nineties, when the first ant colony optimization algorithm was first proposed, ACO attracted the attention Figure 1:Ant Behaviour of increasing numbers of researchers and A. Ants in a pheromone trail between nest and food; many successful applications are now B. An obstacle interrupts the trail; C. Ants find two available. Moreover, a substantial corpus of paths to go around the obstacle; D. A new pheromone theoretical results is becoming available trail is formed along the shorter path. that provides useful guidelines to researchers and practitioners in further Pheromone evaporation has also the applications of ACO advantage of avoiding the convergence to a locally optimal solution. If there were no evaporation at all, the paths chosen by the 2.2 Characteristics of ACO first ants would tend to be excessively Stigmergy is a method of communication attractive to the following ones. In that case, in systems in which the individual parts of the exploration of the solution space would the system communicate with one another be constrained. Thus, when one ant finds a by modifying their local environment. The good path to a food source, other ants are two main characteristics of stigmergy that more likely to follow that path, and positive differentiate it from other forms of feedback eventually leaves all the ants communication are: following a single path. Figure 1 describes (i) Stigmergy is an indirect, non- this ant behaviour. symbolic form of communication mediated by the environment: 1.3 Other Social Insects for insects exchange information by Optimization modifying the environment; and (ii) Stigmergic information is local: it Examples of other optimisation systems can only be accessed by those which can be found in nature include bird insects that visit the locus in which flocking, animal herding, bacteria moulding it was released (or its immediate and fish schooling, pedestrians, traffic. The neighbourhood) beauty of the entire phenomenon lies in the seemingly intelligent group behaviour that 2.3 The Double Bridge Experiment emerges from multiple individual animals. Deneubourg et al. thoroughly investigated 2. Ant Colony Optimization. the behaviour of ants. In an experiment known as the “double bridge 2.1 The Theory of Ant Colonies experiment”( Figure 2) the nest of a colony of Argentine ants was connected to a food source by two bridges of equal plays an important role: the ants choosing lengths. In such a setting, ants start to by chance the short bridge are the first to explore the surroundings of the nest and reach the nest. The short bridge, therefore, eventually reach the food source. Along their receives pheromone earlier than the long paths, the ants deposit pheromone. Initially, one and this fact increases the probability each ant randomly chooses one of the two that further ants select it rather than the bridges. However, due to random long one. A model of this observed fluctuations, after some time, one of the two behaviour was developed. bridges presents a higher concentration of pheromones than the other and , thus, attracts 2.4 ACO Procedure - Pseudo more ants. This brings a further amount of Algorithm pheromone on that bridge making it more attractive with the result that after some time The ACO pseudo-algorithm is shown the whole colony converges towards the use below. After initialization, the algorithm of the same bridge. iterates over three phases: at each iteration, This colony–level behaviour based on a number of solutions are constructed by autocatalysis , that is , on the exploitation of the ants; these solutions are then improved positive feedback , can be used by ants to through a local search (this step is find the shortest path between a food source optional), and finally the pheromone is and their nests. A variant of the “double updated. bridge experiment”, in which one bridge is significantly longer than the other was 1. (Initialization) considered. In this case, the stochastic Set parameters, initialize pheromone fluctuations in the initial choice of a bridge trails. are much reduced and a second mechanism. Initialize τιψ, for each ι,ψ 2. (Construction of AntSolution) For each ant k do Repeat Compute ηιψ for each ι,ψ. Choose in probability the state to move into Append the chosen move to move the kth ant’s set tabu. Until ant k has completed its solution. [apply a local search(optional)] 3. (Pheromone Trail Update) For each ant move ( ι,ψ) do Compute ∆τιψ and update the trail values Figure 2: Experimental Setup for the 4. (Terminating condition) double bridge experiment (a) branches have If not (end_condition) go to step-2. equal lengths;(b) branches have different lengths. 3. Variants of the ACO Algorithm. Different ant colony optimization algorithms can be useful for quickly algorithms have been proposed .The original finding high quality solution. Other ACO algorithm is known as Ant System and popular applications are to dynamic was proposed in the early nineties. It’s main shortest path problems arising in characteristic is that at each iteration, the telecommunication networks problems. pheromone values are updated by all the ants The number of successful applications to that have built a solution in the iteration academic problems has motivated people itself. to adopt ACO for the solution of industrial Since then a number of other ACO problems, proving that this computation of algorithms, variants of the original Ant intelligence technique is also useful in real System, were presented, of which the two world applications. most successful algorithms were MAXMIN and Ant Colony system (ACS). 4.1 Application to MAXMIN is an improvement over the telecommunication networks original AntSystem. Its characterizing elements are that only the best ant updates ACO algorithms have shown to be a very the pheromone trails and that the value of the effective approach for routing problems in pheromone is bound. telecommunication networks where the The most interesting contribution of ACS is properties of the system, such as the cost of the introduction of a local pheromone update using links or the availability of the nodes, in addition to the pheromone update vary over time. ACO algorithms were first performed at the end of the construction applied to routing problems in circuit- process. The local update done diversifies switched networks (such as telephone the search performed by subsequent ants networks) and then in packet-switched during an iteration: by decreasing the networks (such as local area networks or pheromone concentration on the traversed the internet). A well known example is edges, ants encourage subsequent ants to AntNet which has been extensively tested, choose other edges an, hence, to produce in simulation, on different networks and different solutions. This makes it less likely under different traffic patterns, proving to that several ants produce identical solutions be highly adaptable and robust. A during one iteration. comparison with state-of-the-art routing algorithms has shown that, in most of the 4. Applications of ACO in NP-Hard considered situations, AntNet outperforms Problems. its competitors. In recent years, the interest of the scientific Ant-based algorithms have given rise to community in ACO has risen sharply. In several other routing algorithms, enhancing fact, several successful applications of ACO performance in a variety of wired network to a wide range of different discrete scenarios. optimization problems are now available. The large majority of these applications are 4.2 Application to Industrial to NP-Hard problems; that is, to problems Problems for which the best known algorithms that guarantee to identify an optimal solution The success of ACO on academic have exponential time worst case problems has raised the attention of a complexity. The use of such algorithms is number of companies that have started to often infeasible in practice, and ACO sue ACO algorithms for real-world applications. They have applied ACO to a according to a stochastic mechanism that is number of scheduling problems such as a biased by the pheromone: when in vertex i, continuous two-stage flow shop problem the following vertex is selected with finite reservoirs. The problems modeled stochastically included various real world constraints such among the previously unvisited ones. In as setup times, capacity restrictions, resource particular, if j has not been previously compatibilities and maintenance calendars. visited, it can be selected with a probability Some researchers have developed a set of that is proportional to the pheromone tools for the solution of vehicle-routing associated with the edge (i,j). At the end of problems whose optimization algorithms are the iteration, on the basis of the quality of based on ACO. Examples of companies who the solution constructed by the ants, the have successfully used ACO are EuroBios, pheromone values are modified in order to AntOptima, DYVOIL, AntRoute, Migros bias ants in future iterations to construct (the main Swiss supermarket chain) and solutions similar to the best ones previously Barilla (the main Italian pasta maker). constructed. In Figure 3, ACO-TSP is given. 4.3 Conventional ACO for the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a problem in discrete or combinatorial optimization. It is a prominent illustration of a class of problems in computational complexity theory which are hard to solve. The problem states that : Given a number of cities and the costs of traveling from any city to any other city, what is the cheapest round- trip route that visits each city exactly once and then returns to the starting city? In ant colony optimization, the problem is Figure 3 :An ant in city i chooses the next city to tackled by simulating a number of artificial visit via a stochastic mechanism: If j has not been ants moving on a graph that encodes the previously visited, it can be selected with a probability that is proportional to the pheromone problem itself: each vertex represents a city associated with edge (i.j). and each edge represents a connection between two cities. A variable called Many of the tackled NP-Hard problems can pheromone is associated with each edge and be considered as falling into one of the can be read and modified by ants. Ant colony following categories: routing problems as optimization is an iterative algorithm. At they arise for example in the distribution of each iteration , a number of artificial ants are goods; assignment problems, where a set of considered. Each of them builds a solution by items (objects, activities etc.) has to be walking from vertex to vertex on the graph assigned to a given number of with the constraint of not visiting any vertex resources(location, agents etc.)subject to that she has already visited in her walk. At some constraints; scheduling problems , each step of the solution construction, an ant which –in the widest sense- concerned with selects the following vertex to be visited the allocation of scare resources to tasks over time; and subset problems , where a successful applications have changed our solution to a problem is considered to be a perspective: what seemed a far-out idea is selection of a subset of available items. In now considered one of the most promising addition, ACO has been successfully applied approaches to the approximate solution of to other problems emerging in fields such as difficult optimization problems. machine learning and bioinformatics. This paper is a brief write-up of the ideas and inspirations behind ACO. The 5. The Merits and Demerits of ACO. effectiveness of ACO is justified by the variety of applications of ACO. This being Some of the inherent advantages of ACO an emerging field of the Swarm algorithms are as follows : Intelligence area, much more exploration • The Positive Feedback in ACO and experimentation can be done in future. accounts for rapid discovery of good solutions 7. References • ACO employs Distributed computation, which avoids premature [1] Marco Dorigo, Mauro Birattari, and convergence. Thomas Stiitzli, “Ant Colony Optimization: • The greedy heuristic used in ACO Artificial Ants as a Computational Intelligence helps find an acceptable solution in Technique”, IEEE Transaction on the early solution in the early stages Evolutionary Computation, November 2006, of the search process. pp. 28-36. Some of the disadvantages in ACO [2] J.-L.Deneubourg, S.Aron, S.Goss, and J.- algorithms are: M.Pasteels, “The Self Organizing Exploratory • These algorithms have slower Pattern of the Argentine Ant”, Journal of Insect convergence than other Heuristics. Behaviour, Vol.3, p.159, 1990. • They performed poorly for TSP problems larger than 75 cities. [3] Official website of the Ant Colony • There is no centralized processor to Metaheuristic: www.aco-metaheuristic.org guide the Ant System towards good solutions. [4] Other Related links: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence 6. Conclusion
Ant Colony Optimization has been and
continues to be a fruitful paradigm for designing effective combinatorial optimization solution algorithms. After more than ten years of studies, both its application effectiveness and its theoretical groundings have been demonstrated, making ACO one of the most successful paradigm in the metaheuristic area. Fifteen years ago, when the first ACO algorithm was introduced, taking inspiration from ants for designing optimization algorithms seemed a crazy idea. The many