Omkar K Kulkarni

Trupti K Bhoskar

Sujata L. Patekar

Ninad K Kulkarni

G. M. Kakandikar

V. M.Nandedkar

Abstract

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic that is inspired by nature and was developed by Marco Dorigo in 1992. This works on the pheromone trail laying and following behaviour of some ant species. Artificial ants in ACO are stochastic solution construction procedures that build candidate solutions for the problem instance under concern by exploiting (artificial) pheromone information that is adapted based on the ant's search experience and possibly available heuristic information. Thus then any problem can be solved by comparing it to the ant search for food and the better solution can be obtained which is rather called as optimization. This paper describes the ant colony algorithm, variants of ACO & its applications of ant colony algorithm in the field of mechanical engineering and material science.

Keywords- Ant Colony Optimization, Variants, Applications.