A timetabling applied case solved with ant colony optimization

Abstract

This research present an applied case of the resolution of a timetabling problem called the University course Timetabling problem (UCTP), the resolution technique used is based in Ant Colony Optimization metaheuristic. Ant Colony Optimization is a Swarm Intelligence technique which inspired from the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. We propose a framework to solve the University course Timetabling problem effectively. We show the problem and the resolution design using this framework. First we tested our proposal with some competition instances, and then compare our results with other techniques. The results show that our proposal is feasible and competitive with other techniques. To evaluate this framework in practice way, we build a real instance using the case of the school of Computer Science Engineering of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and the Department of Computer Engineering at Playa Ancha University.