We propose a distributed model of nestmate recognition, analogous to the one used by the vertebrate immune system, in which colony response results from the diverse reactions of many ants. The model describes how individual behaviour produces colony response to non-nestmates. No single ant knows the odour identity of the colony. Instead, colony identity is defined collectively by all the ants i...

Software today is no longer monolithic, but typically part of a system consisting of many components. As engineers are no longer in control of the entire system, novel methods are sought to design complex software systems that are built from the bottom up and are robust in a dynamically changing environment. The coordination method called stigmergy that is inspired by the collective behavior of...

Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window (VRPTW), an extension of VRP, is a complex combinatorial problem having many real life applications. It can be described as the problem of minimizing the total route cost while satisfying the capacity and time window constraint. Ant Colony System (ACS) is a meta heuristic that is often applied to solve VRPTW. In this paper an attempt has been made to enh...

This paper presents an ant colony approach optimization to shunt capacitor placement on distribution systems under capacitor switching constraints. The optimum capacitor allocation solution is found for the system of feeders fed through their transformer and not for any individual feeder. The main advantages due to capacitor installation, such as system capacity release and reduction of overall...

The ant colony algorithm is a new technique for combinatorial optimization borrowed from swarm intelligence. This paper outlines an ant colony algorithm to compute the optimal order of restoring sections in a power distribution system. Restoration of distribution feeders after long interruptions creates cold load pickup conditions due to loss of diversity among the loads. The distribution syste...

In the railway station signal system, the route searching algorithm is an important software module to realize the function safety of this system. In the paper, the ant colony algorithm is applied to the railway station route searching. Take the specific station route-the Wangzhai Station route for example to search the shortest route. The ideas of the Wangzhai Station route searching are put f...

With the development of information technology, the capability and application fields of robots become wider. In order to complete a complex task, the cooperation and coordination of robots are needed to be adopted. As the main problem of the multi-robot systems, multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) reflects the organization form and operation mechanism of the robots system. The cooperation and a...

This paper presents solution of optimal power flow (OPF) problem of a power system via an Ant Colony Optimization Meta-heuristic method. The objective is to minimize the total fuel cost of thermal generating units and also conserve an acceptable system performance in terms of limits on generator real and reactive power outputs, bus voltages, shunt capacitors/reactors, transformers tap-setting a...

By use of the properties of ant colony algorithm and genetic algorithm, a novel ant colony genetic hybrid algorithm, whose framework of hybrid algorithm is genetic algorithm, is proposed to solve the traveling salesman problems. The selection operator is an artificial version of natural selection, and chromosomes with better length of tour have higher probabilities of being selected in the next...

Ant colony optimization algorithm for continuous domains is a major research direction for ant colony optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose a distribution model of ant colony foraging, through analysis of the relationship between the position distribution and food source in the process of ant colony foraging. We design a continuous domain optimization algorithm based on the model an...