Single-Colony Adaptive Heterogeneous Ant Colony Algorithm for Mobile Robot Path Planning

Abstract

Aiming at the existent problems of complex structure, slow optimization rate and inadequate adaptability of multi-colony ant colony algorithm, a single colony adaptive heterogeneous ant colony algorithm is proposed to solve mobile robot path planning. The proposed algorithm employs a single colony to avoid the problem of complex structure of multi-ant colony algorithm. Each ant in the colony has its own control parameters to realize the hete-rogeneous behavior and increase the diversity of the population. In the first iteration, only the heuristic factor is used to construct the candidate solution, which improves the quality of the initial population. The information exchange period is adaptively determined based on the change of population information entropy to enhance the adaptability of the algorithm. The information exchange strategy transfers the control parameters of the optimal ant to the worst ant to enhance the guiding role of the optimal ant. Parameter mutation operation is helpful for exploring better algo-rithm parameters in a larger parameter space and improving the ability to escape from local optimization. The results of simulation experiments and statistical tests verify the effectiveness, stability and superiority of the pro-posed algorithm.

Keywords

• |colony algorithm|population information entropy|mobile robot|path planning|adaptive information exchange period|state transition rule|parameter mutation