Ant Colony Optimization and Multiple Knapsack Problem

Abstract

The ant colony optimization algorithms and their applications on the multiple knapsack problem (MKP) are introduced. The MKP is a hard combinatorial optimization problem with wide application. Problems from different industrial fields can be interpreted as a knapsack problem including financial and other management. The MKP is represented by a graph, and solutions are represented by paths through the graph. Two pheromone models are compared: pheromone on nodes and pheromone on arcs of the graph. The MKP is a constraint problem which provides possibilities to use varied heuristic information. The purpose of the chapter is to compare a variety of heuristic and pheromone models and different variants of ACO algorithms on MKP.