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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering

Ant Colony Systems
and the
Ant Algorithm
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
REAL ANT BEHAVIOR
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Natural behavior of ants have inspired scientists to mimic insect
operational methods to solve real-life complex problems
By observing ant behavior, scientists have begun to understand
their means of communication
Ant-based behavioral patterns to address combinatorial
problems - first proposed by Marco Dorigo
REAL ANT BEHAVIOR
Ants secrete pheromone while
traveling from the nest to food,
and vice versa in order to
communicate with one another to
find the shortest path
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF ANTS
The more ants follow a trail, the more attractive that trail
becomes for being followed

NEST

FOOD

NEST

FOOD

NEST

FOOD
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
ANT Behavior
The more ants follow a trail, the more attractive that trail
becomes for being followed
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
ANT Behavior
Even when the tracks are equal the behavior will encourage one
over the other--convergence (Deneubourg et al)
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
ROUTE SELECTION
Ants are forced to decide whether they should go left or right, and
the choice that is made is a random decision
Pheromone accumulation is faster on the shorter path
The difference in pheromone content between the two paths over
time makes the ants choose the shorter path
Positive feedback mechanism to arrive at the shortest route while
foraging
Stygmergy or stigmergetic model of communication
Different optimization problems have been explored using a
simulation of this real ant behavior
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEM
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
PROBLEM DEFINITION
OBJECTIVE

Given a set of n cities, the Traveling
Salesman Problem requires a salesman
to find the shortest route between the
given cities and return to the starting
city, while keeping in mind that each city
can be visited only once
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
WHY IS TSP DIFFICULT TO SOLVE?
Finding the best solution may entail an exhaustive search for all
combinations of cities. This can be prohibitive as n gets very
large
Heuristics like a greedy route doesnt guarantee optimal
solutions

d
e
g f b
c
h
a d
e
g f b
c
h
a
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
TSP Applications
Lots of practical applications
Routing such as in trucking, delivery, UAVs
Manufacturing routing such as movement of parts along manufacturing
floor or the amount of solder on circuit board
Network design such as determining the amount of cabling required
Two main types
Symmetric
Asymmetric
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
General Formulation - Symmetric
ij
i i j
ij
x d

>
min

i x x
i j i j
j i i j
> +

< >
2
, ,

3 2
, ,
> > +

e
>
e e
>
e
S S x x
S i
i j
S j S i
i j
S j
j i j i

+
eB x
j i,

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
General Formulation - Asymmetric
ij
i i j
ij
x d

=
min

i x
j
i j
=

1
,

i x
i
j i
=

1
,

2 1
,
> >

e e
S S x
S i S j
j i

+
eB x
j i,

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
TSP Heuristics
Variety of heuristics used to solve the TSP
The TSP is not only theoretically difficult it is also difficult in practical
application since the tour breaking contraints get quite numerous
As a result there have been a variety of methods proposed for the TSP
Nearest Neighbor is a typical greedy approach
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Simple Examples
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 Chicago 96 105 50 41 86 46 29 56 70
2 Dallas 78 49 94 21 64 63 41 37
3 Denver 60 84 61 54 86 76 51
4 KC 45 35 20 26 17 18
5 Minn 80 36 55 59 64
6 OK City 46 50 28 8
7 Omaha 45 37 30
8 St Louis 21 45
9 Sprngfld 25
10 Wichita

1
2 8
3
9
7
6
5
4
6
2
1 2
6
2
2 2
2
1
6
2
1
2
2

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Nearest Neighbor Solution
Iteration Node Arc Cost Total
1 1
2 8 1,8 29
3 9 8,9 21 50
4 4 9,4 17 67
5 10 4,10 18 85
6 6 10,6 8 93
7 2 6,2 21 114
8 7 2,7 64 178
9 5 7,5 36 214
10 3 5,3 84 298
11 3,1 105 403

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Way Point
Depot
Obj Fx:
min d
Larger TSP Example
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Way Point
Depot
d=3138
Initial Order Solution
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Way Point
Depot
d=2108
Nearest Neighbor Solution
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Way Point
Depot
d=1830
Tabu Search Solution
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
THE ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION
METAHEURISTIC
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
GOAL OF ACO HEURISTIC
Artificial ants form a multi-agent system performing the
functions as observed in the real ant system
Exploit stigmergistic communication

The ACO meta-heuristic relies on the co-operation of a
group of artificial ants to obtain a good solution to a
discrete optimization problem such as the TSP
Artificial ants are mutants of a real ant system
The resulting shortest route mapping determined by the agents
can be applied to the optimization problem
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
ACO CHARACTERISTICS
Exploit a positive feedback mechanism
Demonstrate a distributed computational architecture
Exploit a global data structure that changes dynamically as
each ant transverses the route
Has an element of distributed computation to it involving the
population of ants
Involves probabilistic transitions among states or rather
between nodes

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
REAL vs. ARTIFICIAL ANTS
Discrete time steps
Memory Allocation
Quality of Solution
Time of Pheromone
deposition
Distance Estimation
REAL ANT ARTIFICIAL ANT
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
FLOWCHART OF ACO
Have all
cities been
visited
Have the
maximum
Iterations been
performed
START ACO
Locate ants randomly
in cities across the
grid and store the
current city
in a tabu list
Determine probabilistically
as to which city to visit next
Move to next city and
place this city in the
tabu list
Record the length of
tour and clear tabu list
Determine the shortest
tour till now and
update pheromone
NO
YES
STOP
ACO
YES NO
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
KEY PARAMETERS
Trail intensity is given by value of t
ij
which indicates the intensity
of the pheromone on the trail segment, (ij)
Trail visibility is q
ij
= 1/d
ij

The importance of the intensity in the probabilistic transition is o
The importance of the visibility of the trail segment is |
The trail persistence or evaporation rate is given as
Q is a constant and the amount of peromone laid on a trail
segment employed by an Ant; this amount may be modified in
various manners
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
PROBABILISTIC CITY SELECTION
Helps determine the city to visit next while the ant is in a tour
Determined by variables such as the pheromone content in an
edge (i,j) at time instant t, heuristic function of the desirability of
adding edge, and their control parameters
| | | |
| | | |
) (
) (
0
) (
) (
) (
) (
i J j f
i J j if
t
t
t p
k
k
il il
ij ij
k
ij
i
k
J l
e
e

=

e
| o
| o
q t
q t
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
PHEROMONE UPDATING
Using the tour length for the k-th Ant, L
k
, the quantity of pheromone
added to each edge belonging to the completed tour is given by
( )
( )
( ) t T j i edge if
t T j i edge where
L
Q
t
k
k
k
k
ij
e
e

= A
) , (
) , (
0
t
) ( ) ( ) 1 ( ) 1 ( t t t
ij ij ij
t t t A + = +
The pheromone decay in each edge of a tour is given by
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
ACTUALLY 3 ALGORITHMS
The ant-cycle is the approach discussed so far
Information is updated at the end of each tour as such function
of tour length
The ant-density is an approach wherein the pheromone quantity Q
is deposited once the segment is transversed
Pretty much a greedy approach (local information) and not
really providing relative information
The ant-quantity is an approach wherein the pheromone quantity
Q/d
ij
is deposited once the segment is transversed
Also a greedy approach but providing some relative information
by scaling Q by the length of the segment
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Consider the Case Studies in Papers
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
EXTENSIONS
Found that communication among the ants via the intensity factor
is important; makes sense since it provides some global insight
Found that a good number of ants is about equal to the number of
cities
Found that the initial distribution of the ants among the cities does
not really matter
Found that an elitist strategy in which the segments on the best
solution(s) is(are) continually reinforced work well so long as there
were not too few or too many elitist solutions
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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
APPLICATIONS

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
APPLICATIONS

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Population-Based Incremental Learning
Lots of similarities to the ACO
Actually inspired by genetic algorithms
Generate members of a population randomly based on
probability of selection functions that are increased or
decreased based on the quality of past solutions involving the
member variables
Once a population is generated, evaluate and then increase or
lower the probability used by the generating vector to
encourage better solutions.

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Population-Based Incremental Learning
Benefits
Will converge to solutions under correct circumstances
Efficient in terms of storage
Computationally pretty cheap
Involves learning
Disadvantages
Keeps primarily a local focus
Cannot handle interdependence among parameters very
well
Will need to involve penalty functions for constraints

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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
Population-Based Incremental Learning
A solution to overcome disadvantages proposed by Miagkiky
and Punch
Combine reinforcement with population generation


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Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering
QUESTIONS??