
4 Ant Colony Optimization
seeking the shortest route between their nest and food source. As presented in
Fig. 1.1, ants are traveling in a straight line as it clearly provides the shortest
possible path between two points, i.e., nest and food source. The foraging and
adjacent ants with food are using the same path. It has been assumed that all
ants are traveling at normal speed; thus most of the ants will appear at the
shortest path in an average time. Therefore, the pheromone concentration will
increase at the shortest path as most of the ants follow this path. After some
time, the difference in the amount of pheromone levels on these paths will b