Multi-colony ant algorithms for the dynamic travelling salesman problem

Abstract

A multi-colony ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm consists of several colonies of ants. Each colony uses a separate pheromone table in an attempt to maximize the search area explored. Over the years, multi-colony ACO algorithms have been successfully applied on different optimization problems with stationary environments. In this paper, we investigate their performance in dynamic environments. Two types of algorithms are proposed: homogeneous and heterogeneous approaches, where colonies share the same properties and colonies have their own (different) properties, respectively. Experimental results on the dynamic travelling salesman problem show that multi-colony ACO algorithms have promising performance in dynamic environments when compared with single colony ACO algorithms.