‫‪ant colony‬‬

‫محمد امین راستگو جهرمی‬

‫مهدی دهقان نژاد‬

‫و فی الرض آیات للموقنین و فی انفسکم افل تبصرون‬

 ant colony
• Communication
through the use of
pheromone trails.

• Self-organisation:
high-level function is
the result of the
combination of the Effect: optimised cost of
the ants’ searching
ants’ low-level process though global
tasks. information is not
available.
 Foraging behavior of Ants

• 2 ants start with equal probability of going

on either path.
 Foraging behavior of Ants

• The ant on shorter path has a shorter

to-and-fro time from it’s nest to the food.
 Foraging behavior of Ants

• The density of pheromone on the

shorter path is higher because of 2
passes by the ant (as compared to 1 by
the other).
 Foraging behavior of Ants

• The next ant takes the shorter route.

 Foraging behavior of Ants

• Over many iterations, more ants begin

using the path with higher pheromone,
thereby further reinforcing it.
 Foraging behavior of Ants

• After some time, the shorter path is almost

exclusively used.
Defining Ant Systems
• Problem Representation
The problem has to be represented as a graph, the solution
being a minimum cost path.
• Evaluation function
Problem-specific function that evaluates the solutions.
• Local heuristic
The information that guides the ants’ search process e.g. the
gain in the value of the evaluation function.
• Pheromone update rule(s)
Define the amount and timing of the pheromone disposal.
• Probabilistic transition rule
Utilises both the heuristic value and the pheromone amounts so
that the ants decide their transitions from one node of the graph
to the next.
 General Ant Colony
Heuristic
For discrete optimization problem with:
• Set of nodes S={1,…,N}
• Edges for nodes with time-dependent
costs
• States = lists of nodes
• Neighbourhood of states given by the
edges
• Constraints for feasible states, solutions
• Costs for solutions given by the edge-
costs
Ant Colony Meta-heuristic
• Procedure AntMetaHeuristic
– Set parameters, initial pheromone levels
– While (termination condition not met) do
• Construct Ants’ Solutions
• Evaluate Solutions
• Update Pheromones (according to soln
goodness)
– End
• End
 General Ant Colony Heuristic (II)

Ants generation Pheromone

and activity evaporation

Daemon
activities

05/31/08 Seminar Learning Algorithms 12

 General Ant Colony Heuristic (III)

Ants generation and activity:

compute
 while resources make decision
transition
available: create ant and move
probabilities
 for each ant:
4. initialize
5. let ant run until a solutionevaluate
is found update the
the current
state
6. possibly: update state
pheromone and routing possibly
table update
pheromone

05/31/08 Seminar Learning Algorithms 13