Many real-world optimization problems in, e.g., engineering or biology have the property that not much is known about the function to be optimized. This excludes the application of problem-specific algorithms. Simple randomized search heuristics are then used with surprisingly good results. In order to understand the working principles behind such ... more >>>

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has become quite popular in recent years. In contrast to many successful applications, the theoretical foundation of this randomized search heuristic is rather weak. Building up such a theory is demanded to understand how these heuristics work as well as to come up with better algorithms ... more >>>

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a kind of randomized search heuristic that has become very popular for solving problems from combinatorial optimization. Solutions for a given problem are constructed by a random walk on a so-called construction graph. This random walk can be influenced by heuristic information about the problem. ... more >>>