A nature-inspired algorithm for the disjoint paths problem

The edge-disjoint paths (EDP) problem The EDP problem is interesting for different research fields such as combinatorial optimization, algorithmic graph theory and operations research. In general, there is a lack of efficient algorithms for tackling the EDP problem. Only some greedy approaches and a preliminary ant colony optimization (ACO) approach (Blesa and Blum, 2004) exist for tackling the problem. The greedy approaches are used as approximation algorithms for theoretical purposes, but the quality of the solutions they obtain are susceptible to improvement. Based on the (basic) approach in Blesa and Blum (2004), we have evolved a more sophisticated ACO algorithm