Ant Colony Optimization: A Swarm Intelligence based Technique

Abstract

The growing complexity of real-world problems has motivated computer scientists to search for efficient problemsolving methods. Divide and conquer techniques are one way to solve large and difficult problems. Division of large work into smaller parts and combining the solution of small problems to get the solution of large one has been a practice in computer research since long time. Swarm also exhibits the behavior of division of work and cooperation to achieve difficult tasks. Evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence meta-heuristics are outstanding examples which show that nature has been an unending source of inspiration. Artificial Swarm/Ant foraging utilizes various forms of indirect communication, involving the implicit transfer of information from agent to agent through modification of the environment. Using this approach, one can design efficient searching methods that can find solution to complex optimization problems. Over times, several algorithms have been designed and used that are inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants colonies to find solutions to difficult problems. In this paper the idea of Ant Colonies is presented with brief introduction to its applications in different areas of problem solving in computer science.