Omicron ACO. A New Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Abstract

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic inspired by the foraging behavior of ant colonies that has been successful in the resolution of hard combinatorial optimization problems like the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). This paper proposes the Omicron ACO (OA), a novel population-based ACO alternative originally designed as an analytical tool. To experimentally prove OA advantages, this work compares the behavior between the OA and the MMAS as a function of time in two well-known TSP problems. A simple study of the behavior of OA as a function of its parameters shows its robustness.