Ant colony search algorithms for optimal polygonal approximation of plane curves

This paper presents a new polygonal approximation method using ant colony search algorithm. The problem is represented by a directed graph such that the objective of the original problem becomes to .nd the shortest closed circuit on the graph under the problem-speci.c constraints. A number of arti.cial ants are distributed on the graph and communicate with one another through the pheromone trails which are a form of the long-term memory guiding the future exploration of the graph. The important properties of the proposed method are thoroughly investigated. The performance of the proposed method as compared to those of the genetic-based and the tabu search-based approaches is very promising. ? 2003 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.