ACO bugged me for a long time. I read about swarms and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in around 2005. Then forgot about it. Now that I’ve written more Posts and read a lot of new math, I came back to the subject. I was fascinated by what actually a ACO is? Is it the same as particle swarm optimization?

Yes.

ACO is same as PSO. They are both about a ‘group’ or swarm trying to find a good path. What’s a “good” path? That is defined within the optimization problem.

So the idea in ACO is that use many agents, instead of a single agent, and make some simple rules also for communicating of the findings. The ACO is named after ants, and PSO is named basically after any generic Swarm (of things). Whereas both of these come down to computer code, it doesn’t matter which you prefer.