The ACO Metaheuristic

ACO 2.1 - 2.3

January 2008
C. Colson

Ants in Mythology
Zeus turned the hardworking ants of the uninhabited island of
Aegina into the subjects of Aeacus. The people were called the
Myrmidons.

Ples (son of Aeacus) was the father of Achilles

Although Achilles was from Thessaly, he leads his distant kinsmen,
the Myrmidons in the Trojan War as told by Homer in the Iliad.
Of the Myrmidons: Industry, thrift, endurance; they are eager for
gain, and never easily relinquish, what they have won!"

Metaheuristic?
Refers to a master strategy that modifies sub-heuristics.
A general purpose heuristic designed to guide an underlying
problem-specific heuristic towards promising solutions.

NP-hard problems are believed to be unsolvable in

polynomial time (tractable and intractable problems).
As a result, heuristic methods are applied to get nearoptimal results in a reasonable time.
Metaheuristics have entered the picture to guide
heuristic methods applicable to widely varying
problems.
ACO is a metaheuristic framework:
applicable to many different applications.

Combinational Optimization
Involve finding values for discrete variables such that an optimal solution
with respect to a given objective function is found.

Traveling salesman
Supply-chain logistics planning
Asset allocation

Maximize or Minimize applications: (S, f, )

Problem: general question to be answered
Instance: a case of specified values for a problem

S: set of candidate solutions

f(s): objective function (s S)
: constraints
Feasible solutions: subset of S, that satisfies
Globally optimal solution: s*

Minimization example: f(s*) f(s) for all {s }

Maximization example: f(s*) f(s) for all {s }

Computational Complexity
Straight-forward approach to solution: exhaustive search!
The possible solutions grows exponentially with instance size (n).

Time complexity: maximum time an algorithm needs to find a

solution to an instance of n-size (aka worst-time complexity).
Big-O formal notation: (function)
A function g(n) is said to be ( h(n) ), if two positive constants A
and n0 exist such that g(n) Ah(n) for all nn0 . This is the
asymptotic upper bound.
Polynomial time complex: if ( g(n) ) where g(n) is a
polynomial. If k is the largest exponent of the polynomial g(n),
then the problem is said to be solvable in ( nk ) time.
Exponential time complex: if ( g(n) ) cannot be bounded by a
polynomial.
Intractable = not polynomial time complex.

NP-Completeness

(Bottom of page 28)

P-class: an algorithm that outputs the correct answer (yes

or no) in poly-time.
NP-class (stands for Non-deterministic Polynomial): an
algorithm that verifies every instance is indeed yes in polytime.
NP Problems
P is a subset of NP
P = NPP Problems

NP-hard???

complete ???
NP-complete
Problems

Poly-time reductions: the transformation of one problem into

another one by a poly-time algorithm.
Key point: if the resultant problem is solvable in poly-time,
then the original problem is likewise solvable in poly-time!

Two more classifications of algorithms:

Exact :
guaranteed to find optimal solution
prove optimality for every (finite-size) instance
runs within instance-dependent time (worst case scenario: exponentialtime)

Approximate (trades optimality for speed/efficiency) heuristic

methods; seeks near-optimal solutions but cannot guarantee
optimality.
Further classified into constructive and local searches
Constructive (iteratively add solution components to the empty solution
set until solution set is found): incremental solutions without
backtracking (see NNH for TSP problem on pg. 30)
Local search (starts from a full solution set and tries to make
improvements by local changes): iterative exploration that seeks to
improve the solution with local changes (see best-improvement rule for
neighborhood examination scheme on pg. 31)
Neighborhood structure: the set of possible solutions that the algorithm
can move to from the current solution.

The ACO Metaheuristic

A colony of artificial ants cooperate to find good
solutions to difficult discrete optimization problems.
Good solutions are an emergent property of
cooperation!
Static problems: all characteristics of the problem
are defined once and do not change.
Dynamic problems: characteristics vary according to
underlying functions and the optimization must
adapt to the changing environment.
See problem definition on pgs. 34 & 35.

ACO (continued)
Ants build solutions by performing stochasic action
on the construction graph which is made up of
components (nodes) and connections (paths).
Sometimes the ants find feasible solutions,
sometimes not (and thats ok).
The pheromone trail is coded long-term memory.
Heuristic information: additional information that
the ants have, a priori, from a source other than
the environment (example: estimated path cost)
Although ants act concurrently, independently, and
most times dumbly, goodquality solutions arise
from collective interaction of the ants.

ACO Components
ConstructAntsSolutions:

manages ants concurrently

stochastic engine resides here
evaluation function for ant performance resides here

UpdatePheromones:
deposits or evaporates pheromone trails.

DaemonActions:

centralized actions not resident in individual ants

optional functionality
example: pheromone bonuses for shortest path yet

See page 38 for pseudocode.

ACO Applications
Hamiltonian circuit: a trip solution on an undirected graph
which visits each city (node) exactly once and returns to
the starting city.
Symmetric TSP:

only paths have cost

shortest Hamiltonian circuit trip length
cost from node i to j is identical to j to i.

Asymmetric traveling salesman problem

cost from node i to j is not identical to j to i.

Sequential Ordering Problem: similar to TSP

an asymmetric traveling salesman problem with additional

constraints
doesnt need to return to starting city
a precedence constraint must be considered
the precedence constraint requires that some node i has to be
visited before some other node j
Note: pheromones play roughly the same role in these cases.

ACO Applications (continued)

Generalized Assignment Problem:

a number of agents and a number of tasks

any agent can be assigned to perform any task, but incurs some
cost/profit that varies with the assignment
each agent has a budget and the sum of the costs of task assigned
(cannot exceed its budget).
solution is an assignment in which all agents do not exceed their
budget
good solution minimizes cost or maximizes profit
pheromones associated with either the next task to choose or which
agent to assign the task to.

Multiple Knapsack Problem:

goal is to maximize valuable items that can fit into one bag to be
carried on a trip
given a set of items, each with a cost and a value, determine the
number of each item to include in a collection so that the total cost is
less than a given limit and the total value is as large as possible
pheromones are associated only with the desirability of adding a
particular item to a solution

ACO Applications (continued)

Network Routing Problem:
minimum path costs between pairs of nodes in
the network
each connection (path) should have multiple
pheromone trails associated for each different
node destination.

Dynamic TSP:
time is a factor
cities can be added or removed from the graph
pheromones act similarly to standard TSP
problem.