The growing interest in ant colony optimization algorithms and, more generally,
in ant algorithms, led, in 1998, to the organization of ANTS’98 –F rom Ant
Colonies to Artificial Ants, the first international workshop on ant algorithms
and ant colony optimization, held in Brussels, Belgium, which saw the participation
of more than 50 researchers from around the world. On that occasion,
a selection of the best papers presented at the workshop were published as a
special issue of the Future Generation Computer Systems (Vol. 16, No. 8, 2000).
The success of the workshop incited us to repeat the experience two years later:
ANTS 2000 saw the participation of more than 70 participants and the 41
extended abstracts presented as talks or posters at the workshop were collected
in a booklet distributed to participants. Also on that occasion, a selection of
the best papers were published as a journal special issue (IEEE Transactions
on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2002). Today the “ant algorithms
community” continues to grow and we can see the field beginning to show encouraging
signs of maturity, even if there is still a long way to go before reaching a
deep and solid understanding concerning theoretical foundations and the design
of effective implementations.