How to Use Ants for Hierarchical Clustering

Abstract. We present in this paper, a new model for document hierarchical clustering, which is inspired from the self-assembly behavior of real ants. We have simulated the way ants build complex structures with different functions by connecting themselves to each other. Ants may thus build ”chains of ants ” or form ”drops of ants”. The artificial ants that we have defined will similarly build a tree. Each ant represents one document. The way ants move, disconnect or connect themselves depends on the similarity between these documents. The result obtained is presented as a hierarchical structure with a series of HTML files with hyperlinks.