A MAX-MIN Ant System for the University Course Timetabling Problem

We consider a simplification of a typical university course timetabling problem involving three types of hard and three types of soft constraints. A MAX-MIN Ant System, which makes use of a separate local search routine, is proposed for tackling this problem. We devise an appropriate construction graph and pheromone matrix representation after considering alternatives. The resulting algorithm is tested over a set of eleven instances from three classes of the problem. The results demonstrate that the ant system is able to construct significantly better timetables than an algorithm that iterates the local search procedure from random starting solutions.

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