An Ant Algorithm Hyper-heuristic

Ant algorithms were introduced in 1996 by Dorigo as a collaborative optimisation method, but it can be argued that they have not yet fulfilled their potential. Hyper-heuristic research is concerned with the development of “heuristics to choose heuristics” in an attempt to raise the level of generality at which optimisation systems can operate. In this paper the two are brought together. Variants of applications of the ant algorithm as a hyper-heuristic are investigated and developed. The results are evaluated against other hyper-heuristic methods.