Application of Ant Colony Optimisation Method

Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) is a meta-heuristic method that has drawn much interest in solving challenging optimisation issues. This paper examines the use of ACO to reduce the time spent on moving goods and people in Covenant University's transportation system. Covenant University is a private Christian university in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. Covenant University started on 21st October 2002, and since its opening, it has grown to be one of the world-class universities that have been ranked and recognised all around the globe. The data was collected from an article that computed the time per unit distance between origins and destinations within the university using Google Maps. The three traditional transportation techniques (Northwest corner method, least cost method, and Vogel's approximation method) alongside Ant colony meta-heuristics were used to get the initial basic feasible solution, which gave (361.3, 361.7, 359.8, 361.7) minutes, respectively. Then, the MODI approach was used to find the optimal solution (346.6 minutes). Also, the R programming language was used to run the Codes for the three traditional methods and the ACO method, which gave the result of solving manually. The optimal solution showed that if the time spent is reduced, the movement of people and goods would be enhanced, resulting in more time to handle important matters.