Many real-world optimization problems in, e.g., engineering
or biology have the property that not much is known about
the function to be optimized. This excludes the application
of problem-specific algorithms. Simple randomized search
heuristics are then used with surprisingly good results. In
order to understand the working principles behind such
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Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has become quite popular in recent
years. In contrast to many successful applications, the theoretical
foundation of this randomized search heuristic is rather weak.
Building up such a theory is demanded to understand how these
heuristics work as well as to ... more >>>

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a kind of randomized search heuristic that has become very popular for solving problems from combinatorial optimization. Solutions for a given problem are constructed by a random walk on a so-called construction graph. This random walk can be influenced by heuristic information about the problem. ... more >>>