Ant colony optimization algorithm wrote in typescript. You can see the demo in action here.

ACO (Ant colony optimization) algorithm was invented to search for the (probabilistic) optimal path on a weighted graph and to solve the travelling salesman problem.

There are multiple extensions of the ant system, but I decided to implement the first and original one. This algorithm is heuristic which means that it will most likely give a better solution with more iterations.

In the ACO algorithm, we need five variables to control the behaviour of our ants:

• Alpha - states how much impact the pheromones have on the final score of an edge
• Beta - determines how much influence the distance has on the final score of an edge
• Pher - initial value of pheromones
• Pho - defines the rate at which pheromones will evaporate
• Q - indicates the number of pheromones

Using other values than the default will change the behaviour of ants and their ability to determine paths.

Ant colony optimization