ANTS 2004
Fourth International Workshop on
Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence
September 5-8, 2004. Brussels, Belgium
Sponsored by:
The Metaheuristics Network
Swarm-bots
AntOptima
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The ANTS 2004 conference proceedings are available online. For more information click here.

Scope of the Workshop

Swarm intelligence is a relatively novel discipline interested in the study of self-organizing processes in Nature and human artifacts.

Researchers in ethology and animal behavior have proposed many models to explain interesting aspects of social insect behavior such as self-organization and shape-formation. Recently, algorithms inspired by these models have been proposed to solve difficult computational problems.

An example of particularly successful research direction in swarm intelligence is ant colony optimization, which focuses on discrete optimization problems. Ant colony optimization has been applied successfully to a large number of difficult discrete optimization problems including the traveling salesman, the quadratic assignment, scheduling, vehicle routing, etc., as well as to routing in telecommunication networks.

Another example of interesting research direction is swarm robotics, where the focus is on applying swarm intelligence techniques to the control of large groups of cooperating autonomous robots.

The ANTS 2004 workshop will give researchers in both real and artificial swarm intelligence the opportunity to meet, to present their latest research, and to discuss current developments and applications.

The four-day workshop will be held in Brussels, Belgium, Sep 5-8, 2004. September 5 will be devoted to tutorials.

Relevant Research Areas

ANTS 2004 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence. Typical, but not exclusive topics of interest are:
  • Models of the behavior of social insects or other animal societies that can stimulate new algorithmic approaches.
  • Empirical and theoretical research in ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence.
  • Application of ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence methods to real-world problems.
  • Swarm robotics.

Related Conferences

Note that ten days after ANTS 2004, the conference PPSN-VIII will take place in Birmingham, UK.