Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
Have you ever wondered how ants always seem to find the shortest path between their nest and sources of food? Research has shown that ants deposit certain chemicals called pheromones along their trail that attract other ants to follow the same trail. Initially, the ants wander around randomly, but some ants will accidentally stumble upon a food source and return to the nest. Shorter trails will naturally be traveled more often and therefore have a higher concentration of pheromone, which in turn makes it more likely that other ants follow the trail. Over time the majority of the ants will then converge toward the shortest trail. This idea has been used successfully to find near-optimal solutions to relatively large traveling salesman problems (TSP).