Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will is a book by Robert Sapolsky where among other things, the author talks about how ants get food!
Actually, the numbers would shock you! Depending on the size of an average and colony, it would take 360,000 ways if there are 10 sites to get food.!
Do you know what happen if there are 15 sites!?
There is at least 80 billion ways of getting the food!
So how do ants get it?
They do and very effectively in fact! When this is used to solve problems it is called swarm or ant optimisation!
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm used to solve complex computational problems by finding optimal paths through graphs.
It was introduced by Marco Dorigo in the early 1990s and is a key part of the broader field of swarm intelligence.
The algorithm mimics the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. When searching for food, ants initially wander randomly. Once food is found, they return to their nest while depositing a chemical substance called pheromone on the ground.
Other ants are attracted to these trails. Shorter paths allow ants to return faster, leading to a quicker buildup of pheromones, which in turn attracts more ants.
Over time, the pheromone trails evaporate. This “forgetting” mechanism prevents the colony from getting stuck on a single suboptimal path and encourages the discovery of new, potentially better route!
ACO translates these biological behaviors into a computational framework using “artificial ants”.
This actually has many common applications!
Like the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)! one can use Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) to find the shortest route to visit multiple cities and return home!
We can also use it for Network Routing by Optimizing data traffic and identifying the fastest paths in communication networks!
Another area is for Scheduling! You can assign tasks or resources efficiently (e.g., job-shop or hospital scheduling).
The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) can also be used for vehicle Routing and to determine the best paths for a fleet of delivery vehicles!
See what a colony of ants can do? They can make sure your Amazon prime delivery comes on time!
Ok that may be a bad joke but if you want a good one then check Sreenivasan’s movies!
or watch how an ant finds food!
your choice!
Shubh ratri…
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