Evolving artificial ant systems to improve layouts of graphical objects

Abstract

Artificial ant systems (AAS) have been widely applied to solve many important industrial applications including network configuration or vehicle routing that involve constrained optimisation. In this paper, we explore the possible uses of AAS to handle layouts of graphical objects using constrained optimisation approach. In our evolving AAS, the stepwise movement of each individual ant naturally corresponds to the iterative adjustment of each graphical object in both x- and y-coordinates until a local minimum of a predefined objective function is reached. Up to our knowledge, this work represents the first attempt of applying AAS to improve layouts of graphical objects with simpler computation as compared to existing approaches, thus presenting new opportunities for further investigations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.