In this paper we propose an application of the Ant System (AS) to optimize combinational logic circuits at the gate level. We deene a measure of quality improvement in partially built circuits to compute the distances required by the AS and we consider as optimal those solutions that represent functional circuits with a minimum amount of gates. The proposed methodology is described together wit...

Constructive metaheuristics explore a tree of constructive decisions, the topology of which is determined by the way solutions are represented and constructed. Some solution representations allow particular solutions to be reached on a greater number of paths in this construction tree than other solutions, which can introduce a bias to the search. A bias can also be introduced by the topology o...

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms tend to be isolated processes. When applying ACO principles to traffic route calculations, ants exploring the traffic network on behalf of a vehicle typically only perceive and apply pheromones related to that vehicle. Between ants exploring on behalf of different vehicles little cooperation exists. While such cooperation could improve the performance of...

E cient tool management is very important for the productivity in exible manufacturing systems. This paper proposes an Ant Colony Approach to minimize the number of tool switching instants in exible manufacturing systems. The proposed approach is compared to optimal results from the literature, and very promising results are reported.

................................................................................................................................. I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... III TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................................... IV

A deterministic model for Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms is proposed and used to study the dynamics of ACO. The model is based on the average expected behaviour of ants. The behaviour of ACO algorithms and the model are analysed for certain types of permutation problems. It is shown numerically that decisions of the ants are inuenced in an intriguing way by the properties of the phero...

Images which are captured in outdoor scenes often degrade in quality due to atmospheric conditions induced by suspending particles like mist, haze, fog, etc. which scatter and absorb light before it reaches to the camera. The weather-degraded images directly affect the efficiency of computerized surveillance and monitoring system. In this paper, we propose an efficient haze removal technique wh...

The present article focuses on the application of a procedure based on ant colonies to solve an assembly line balancing problem. After an introduction to assembly line problems, the problem under study is presented: the Time and Space constrained Assembly Line Balancing Problem (TSALBP); and a basic model of one of its variants is put forward for study. Subsequently, an ant algorithm is present...

The ant colony optimisation metaheuristic has shown promise on simplified artificial instances of university course timetabling problems. However, limited work has been done applying it to practical timetabling problems. In this paper, we describe the application of the ant colony optimisation to a highly constrained real–world instance of the university course timetabling problem. We present t...