Multi-caste Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

Authors

Abstract

In this paper we present a multi-caste ant colony optimiza- tion approach, where each caste has its own set of parameters. Two vari- ants are proposed: in the first, the composition of the castes remains fixed throughout the optimization, whilst the other allows ants to move from one caste to another. Results obtained in several traveling salesperson problem instances reveal that the adoption of a multi-caste framework increases the robustness of ACO algorithms. In concrete, we show that the existence of different castes removes the need to carefully define q0, an essential parameter for the success of Ant Colony System.

Keywords

multi-ant colony optimization, parameters adaptation, multiple castes

Subject

Evolutionary Optimization

Conference

15th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2011

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