Ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence

The series of biannual international conferences “ANTS – International C- ference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence”, now in its sixth edition, was started ten years ago, with the organization of ANTS’98. As some readers might recall, the ? rst edition of ANTS was titled “ANTS’98 – From Ant Colonies to Arti? cial Ants: First International Workshop on Ant Colony Op- mization. ” In fact, at that time the focus was mainly on ant colony optimization (ACO), the ? rst swarm intelligence algorithm to go beyond a pure scienti? c interest and to enter the realm of real-world applications. Interestingly, in the ten years after the ? rst edition there has been a gr- ing interest not only for ACO, but for a number of other studies that belong more generally to the area of swarmintelligence. The rapid growth of the swarm intelligence ? eld is attested by a number of indicators. First, the number of s- missions and participants to the ANTS conferences has steadily increased over the years. Second, a number of international conferences in computational - telligence and related disciplines organize workshops on subjects such as swarm intelligence, ant algorithms, ant colony optimization, and particle swarm op- mization. Third, IEEE startedorganizing, in 2003, the IEEE SwarmIntelligence Symposium (in order to maintain unity in this growing ? eld, we are currently establishingacooperationagreementbetweenIEEE SISandANTSsoastohave 1 IEEE SIS in odd years and ANTS in even years). Last, the Swarm Intelligence journal was born.