Ant Colony Optimization is excellent at global exploration – finding promising regions. Local search is excellent at fine optimization – refining solutions. Combining both can yield stronger performance.
- I think local search in this case means hill-climbing
A typical hybrid loop looks like:
- Ant builds a tour
- Apply local search (e.g., 2-opt)
- Use improved tour for pheromone update
This gives us shorter tours, faster convergence, and higher-quality final solutions.