Ant colony optimization for finding the global minimum

The ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms are multi-agent systems in which the behaviour of each ant is inspired by the foraging behaviour of real ants to solve optimization problem. This paper presents the ACO based algorithm to find global minimum. Algorithm is based on that each ant searches only around the best solution of the previous iteration. This algorithm was experimented on test problems, and successful results were obtained. The algorithm was compared with other methods which had been experimented on the same test problems, and observed to be better. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved