594 Homework 1
For asychronous updating, let k be the cell that is updated
Then:
Note: for convenience cell k is not included in the R1 neighborhood
For all other cells i, si(t+1) = si(t)

Energy Function
The energy function is defined by a summation over all the cells, including the one that changed:
You need to show that

Ant Colony Optimization
(ACO)
Developed in 1991 by Dorigo (PhD dissertation) in collaboration with Colorni & Maniezzo

Basis of all Ant-Based Algorithms
Positive feedback
Negative feedback
Cooperation

Positive Feedback
To reinforce portions of good solutions that contribute to their goodness
To reinforce good solutions directly
Accomplished by pheromone accumulation

Negative Feedback
To avoid premature convergence (stagnation)
Accomplished by pheromone evaporation

Cooperation
For simultaneous exploration of different solutions
Accomplished by:
multiple ants exploring solution space
pheromone trail reflecting multiple perspectives on solution space

Ant System for Traveling Salesman Problem (AS-TSP)
During each iteration, each ant completes a tour
During each tour, each ant maintains tabu list of cities already visited
Each ant has access to
distance of current city to other cities
intensity of local pheromone trail
Probability of next city depends on both

Transition Rule
Let hij = 1/dij = ÒnearnessÓ of city j to current city i
Let tij = strength of trail from i to j
Let Jik = list of cities ant k still has to visit after city i in current tour
Then transition probability for ant k going from i to j ë Jik in tour t is:

Pheromone Deposition
Let Tk(t) be tour t of ant k
Let Lk(t) be the length of this tour
After completion of a tour, each ant k contributes:

Pheromone Decay
Define total pheromone deposition for tour t:
Let r be decay coefficient
Define trail intensity for next round of tours:

Number of Ants is Critical
Too many:
suboptimal trails quickly reinforced
\ early convergence to suboptimal solution
Too few:
donÕt get cooperation before pheromone decays
Good tradeoff:
number of ants = number of cities
(m = n)

Improvement: ÒElitistÓ Ants
Add a few (eÅ5) ÒelitistÓ ants to population
Let T+ be best tour so far
Let L+ be its length
Each ÒelitistÓ ant reinforces edges in T+ by Q/L+
Add e more ÒelitistÓ ants
This applies accelerating positive feedback to best tour

Time Complexity
Let t be number of tours
Time is O (tn2m)
If m = n then O (tn3)
that is, cubic in number of cities

Evaluation
Both Òvery interesting and disappointingÓ
For 30-cities:
beat genetic algorithm
matched or beat tabu search & simulated annealing
For 50 & 75 cities and 3000 iterations
did not achieve optimum
but quickly found good solutions
I.e., does not scale up well
Like all general-purpose algorithms, it is out-performed by special purpose algorithms