Experimental evaluation of pheromone structures for Ant colony optimization: Application to the robot skin wiring problem

Abstract

The problem of optimally routing the wiring in large-scale modular skins for robots is gaining much attention in the literature. Theoretically, the problem is NP-hard. On the basis of previous work [3], [37], we solve the skin wiring problem using an Ant Colony Optimization approach. In this Chapter, we address the problem of designing a good pheromone structure: we propose five alternatives, which are validated using both real and artificially generated problem instances. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.