Ant Systems

Éric D. Taillard

ABSTRACT

This article describes ant systems, a metaheuristic based on an ant-foraging metaphor. The presentation of ant systems has been somewhat generalized by adding a "queen" process in charge of coordinating classical  "ant'' processes, so that recent ant systems can be naturally included while remaining close to the metaphor. To illustrate how ant systems are practically implemented, a number of applications to the quadratic assignment problem are reviewed.