Intelligent Systems 

Discussion group on Entropy and Self-organisation in Multi-Agent Systems

Ant Colony Optimisation 

Octavio Miramontes. Order-Disorder Transitions in the Behavior of Ant societies. Complexity 1(3): 56-60 (1995).

      Abstract. Systems of many interacting elements may exhibit both optimal information processing capabilities and optimal adaptive capacity when poised in a state at the boundary separating chaos from order. Ant societies, composed of interacting chaotic individuals, which can generate regular cycles in the activity of the colony, provide one of the very first examples of this phenomenon. They self-organize to attain nest densities at which the transfer of information, per capita activations and the information capacity of the colonies are maximal. At such densities, ant colonies are poised in the neighborhood of a chaos-order phase transition.

Colorni A., M. Dorigo & V. Maniezzo (1992). Distributed Optimization by Ant Colonies. Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life, Paris, France, F.Varela and P.Bourgine (Eds.), Elsevier Publishing, 134-142.

     Abstract. Ant colonies exhibit very interesting behaviours: even if a single ant only has simple capabilities, the behaviour of a whole colony is highly structured. This is the result of coordinated interactions. But, as communication possibilities among ants are very limited, interactions must be based on very simple flows of information. In this paper we explore the implications that the study of ants behaviour can have on problem solving and optimization. We introduce a distributed problem solving environment and propose its use to search for a solution to the travelling salesman problem. 

Contact:

Dr Mikhail Prokopenko
Tel : 61 (02) 9325 3264
Fax: 61 (02) 9325 3200
mikhail.prokopenko@csiro.au